


Counting on Stars

by WanderingCreep



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Sick Character, Soul Selling, but only for a little bit, not-quite magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-08 05:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3196370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingCreep/pseuds/WanderingCreep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poison makes a deal in the desert in order to save Kobra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wish I Had Stars

Counting on Stars

 

It’s dangerous out in the desert; it’s even worse to be caught alone out there at night, but that didn’t matter. Any worries of bandits or wild nocturnal animals had been pushed to the very back of Poison’s mind, and the fear of his brother’s condition back home had taken an unwelcome front and center. It was Kobra. His sickness was worsening. It wasn’t like any of the other times any one of them had been sick with something as miniscule as a cold or a stomach bug, which they all knew could turn into something greater if not at least treated with rest; it was something that came in the form of scratchy coughs, the kind that sounded like you’d choked on a pad of steel wool, cold sweats and fevers, pallid, rubbery skin and unfocused eyes, and that scary sound of air just barely circulating through your lungs. It had a name, this hellish state of being.

In the city, it would have been a quick fix. Pop the pills, take the shot, sleep it off, and you’re good as new in a matter of days thanks to the advanced tech that had beeping and whirring up there. But out here in the desert, you had as much chance as surviving as you might if you found yourself unlucky enough to be caught with a venomous snake bite. And Kobra was stuck with it.

It had happened so quickly, _too_ quickly; sprang on them out of nowhere, though with Kobra’s stubbornness it had probably already taken root in his system days before and he hadn’t told them about it until they had already found it out (i.e. found him nearly in tears, doubled over in a horrifying coughing fit). It had been two days since then and nothing had changed for the better. It was like pneumonia was doing its best to take Kobra from them. It had been when one of Kobra’s coughing fits had ended rather abruptly and he had quietened and stilled that Poison had had enough. He just couldn’t take it. He grabbed the keys to the Trans Am, hurriedly fumbling for them in the pockets of his jacket and gunned it into the desert, barely remembering to put his seatbelt on in his fervor. He remembered hearing Ghoul calling him as he dashed out of the diner in a daze, just above the pounding of blood in his ears, even above the old motor coughing- _no, no, don’t think about it_ -to life and growling like a rabid beast as he pulled out onto the road.

And that had been nearly an hour ago. Poison blinked up at the stars. He was lying on his back on the hood of the Trans Am, the already worked motor warming the metal of the hood against his back. One arm was tucked behind his head, the other splayed uselessly next to him, the transmitter normally clipped to his belt sitting limply in his curled fingers. It had been switched off prior to coming out here to cool off; Poison didn’t want to hear anyone’s voices telling him that Kobra had died after he’d gone, didn’t want to hear anything at all. He knew he should’ve gotten back into the Trans Am and returned to the diner where his brother needed him, might’ve been calling for him, but…

Poison glared at the night sky full of twinkling diamonds and wished that he could just pluck them down, trade them for medicine for Kobra. But he couldn’t, they weren’t actually diamonds, and the guilt and terror were eating him alive. He felt as though he were corroding away under the weight of fear. He himself had never really been afraid of death-it was final, it was futile, it was natural-but when faced with watching it consume a loved one, that was when the chilly fingers of terror came creeping up his spine. He wanted them to melt. He banged his fist down on the hood. The noise echoed into the desert and then died away. For a stiff moment, Poison remembered how stupid a move that was, and lay completely still listening for any signs that he had been discovered.

One minute…

Two minutes…

At three minutes, nothing had made itself known, so Poison could finally exhale. He dragged his hand over his face and blinked rapidly, feeling as though tears were beginning to prickle on the corners of his eyes. ‘ _You should’ve seen it-you know him better than anyone, you should’ve known he was sick_ ,’ he scolded himself. ‘ _And if you lose him, it’s your own fault_.’

Well, the silence was almost as bad as the noise. Voices not doing it for him, and the quiet alone with his thoughts making it far worse to bear, Poison decided that perhaps it was just better to hear the purr of the Trans Am’s old engine; at least it wouldn’t tell him what a complete screw-up he was. He slipped off the hood and unlocked the driver’s side door, slid into the seat and started the engine. This time he remembered to pull his seatbelt across his chest, and disappeared into the night.

 

 

 

Maybe it had been another half-hour-or maybe not, Poison had kind of lost track of time-when a strange sight came up on the side of the road. At first, Poison thought it was simply a large boulder, since the sight wasn’t uncommon in the desert, and it was brownish and dusty looking in the path Trans Am’s headlights. But as he neared, he recognized the glint of light reflecting off of the smooth glass of a window, and suddenly, the boulder lit up in a soft orange color, like firelight.

A van had parked on the side of the road. It was obvious that someone was inside as that was where the light was coming from, though Poison couldn’t see a shadow or silhouette in the windows. A wooden sign had been driven into the ground next to the van that he could read clearly in the headlight’s glow as he slowed the Trans Am to a crawl.

‘ _The Wish Bucket, Curios, Curiosities and Cures to most Ailments Inside’_

Poison lurched forward from stomping on the brake so hard. He’d never seen this thing wandering down the roads in Zone One before. Maybe it was from one of the other zones? It looked beat up enough, like it had seen quite a lot on its excursion through the desert. It was the color of sand with a few dark marks streaked here and there, some tiny spots littering the two back doors, and a kind of awning made of purple fabric hanging above them. Painted on the side was what looked like an open eye under the words ‘ _The Wish Bucket_.’ But what stood out to Poison the most about all of it was the promise of what lay inside: _cures to most ailments_.

He knew he had to be careful with this kind of thing; some zone citizens claimed to have good, quality remedies and medicines, but left you with useless scam goods and an empty wallet. For a moment, he thought of skipping the little shop and going home. ‘ _Kobra needs me_.’

 _Cures to most ailments_ rang out most clearly his mind. _‘But he needs something to keep him alive more.’_

Poison sighed and pulled up close to the back doors and turned off the engine. Walking to the van, he wondered where he was supposed to knock. The back doors seemed as good a place as any. He rapped his knuckles against the cold metal and waited under the tiny homemade awning. He hadn’t noticed before, but tiny charms in the shapes of crescent moons, stars and suns hung drown from the fabric, a little square of paper attached to one. There was writing scribbled on it, probably a price tag for one of the charms, but it was too dark to read.

The doors swung open suddenly, and Poison was greeted with the same warm orange light he’d seen from the road pouring over him now as he stood there. A pleasant scent seemed to wash over the desert as they hung open, something spicy and homey and warm. “Hello,” greeted the shop owner. At first, all that Poison saw was himself, staring curiously back from inside the van, and then he realized that the owner was wearing goggles. It should have struck him as odd that she would be wearing goggles in the middle of the night, but the only thing he had to say was, “What do you have for sickness?”

The owner smiled and gestured to the inside of the van. ‘ _Follow me_.’

Poison stepped inside and immediately had to crouch in order to fit. Along the walls, small shelves had been nailed to the metal, covered in exotic looking cloth to protect the oddities placed upon them. There were jars of colored sand, little ceramic pots covered with lids, boxes of flowers and crystals. More of the little charms he’d seen hanging from the awning were scattered over the various shelves, curled around incense burners, little smoky glass candle holders, vases of dried desert flowers, and little wooden bins of baby food jars filled with what looked like seeds. Wooden cases lay on the floor, which had been covered with some kind of blood red rug.

“Sit, sit,” said the owner, waving at an upturned crate covered with a blanket. Poison sat and watched her as she moved around the van. How she had enough space to move as gracefully as she did in such a cramped space was beyond him; she was small, a little smaller than, say, Ghoul-who was probably the shortest out of all of them-but not child-sized. He still had to sit with his elbows on his knees. Now the owner seemed to be busying herself with something towards the front of the van. She hummed softly, seeming to have forgotten that Poison was there. He fidgeted where he sat, really wanting to have gotten what he needed and been on his way, back to Kobra and the others, and was about to clear his throat and say something, when the owner turned around again, smiling.

“Tea? You look like you’ve had quite a rough night.” She had a bit of an accent. It almost went unnoticed by Poison. She was offering him a little tin cup of something, steam rising from the top of it, and a dry, sandy, sweet smell wafting from it. Poison took it and nodded his thanks before sipping from it. He furrowed his brow. “Wait, what is it?”

“Not poison, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Cactus tea, love. Made from grated cactus pads. Calms your nerves, I think. Amazing what one finds in the desert,” replied the owner. She sat across from Poison on the floor. “But I’m sure you didn’t come here in the middle of the night to chat and have tea, love. What can I help you with?”

Poison nodded, resting the tin cup of tea on his knee. “My brother’s sick, ma’am. He’s, um…he’s got pneumonia…do you have anything that would cure that?” The owner tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I might…let’s see…” She got to her feet and fiddled around in one of the glass jars. “Well, echinea and garlic bulbs help, if you don’t mind stinking breath for a few days.” She grinned at Poison’s odd look. “You have to chew the garlic, love. How good are you at making herbal teas? Most of the remedies require a tea to be made. Hmm…coltsfoot and eucalyptus…”

“How long will it take for these to work?”

The owner paused in her shuffling, making a frustrated noise. “Where’d I put them? Oh, don’t tell me I’m out? Huh? Oh, a few days, give or take, if you make the tea correctly and have him drink it the appropriate amount of times a day.” Poison pursed his lips and tapped his foot on the floor. “Anything that’ll work quicker?”

The owner stopped altogether, and for a moment Poison worried that he’d offended her. “…If you’re asking about city drugs, I’m ‘fraid not, love. Only deal in that which the earth gives me here.” Her shoulders shrugged as she began moving again. “You should check your transmitter, love. Stand outside if it makes you feel too awkward to call in here.” Poison’s chest tightened painfully at her words. A growing sense of fear came tumbling down his back again, and he reached for the device on his belt, moving towards the doors as he did it. Outside, he turned the transmitter back on and twisted the dial until he reached Fun Ghoul’s frequency. “Ghoul? You there?” he couldn’t stop the waver in his voice as he waited for a response. Static hissed on the waves for a moment before the familiar voice of his friend carried across them. “Poison? Thank god, where are you? We’ve been calling you for hours…” Poison’s heart lurched and he felt instantly sick. “Why?”

There was a short pause. “You gotta get back here, Poison. It’s Kobra, man…he’s getting worse.” Poison imagined Ghoul in front of him, running his hands through his dark hair. “Jet says-“

“No, don’t. Don’t worry. I’m…I’m on my way, okay? Just…I’m coming,” Poison blurted into the transmitter, feeling the frustration and fear bubbling away in his chest, threatening to come spilling out. He switched off the transmitter, squeezing it in his hand. Then he whirled on his heel on his way back to the van…

Only to come face to face with the owner. He could see himself again in the blue lenses of her goggles, and for some reason, he realized that he couldn’t even see her own eyes past the lenses. She wasn’t standing right behind him like his shadow, really, she was standing by the open doors, quietly watching him. Never mind the obvious invasion of privacy on her part, Poison approached her quickly, begging her, “You’ve gotta have something. Anything at all?”

The owner shook her head. “I can give you the garlic, love, but-“

“No, no, there’s not enough time! Please, he’s dying-you’ve gotta have something.”

The owner opened her mouth to protest, but Poison cut her off, knowing he looked like a broken, crazed madman. “I’ll do anything!”

The owner stopped short, clamping her mouth shut, then opening it again. Poison saw himself and the starry sky above in both lenses of the owner’s glasses and felt like there were two of him then. “What are you willing to part with?” Poison started suddenly. He glanced back at the Trans Am. He had a few carbons in his jacket pocket. Maybe there was a blanket in the trunk. “No,” the owner said, following Poison’s gaze. “Not that. What I’m talking about is something entirely different.” Poison gave her an odd look. What else could she be talking about? If not carbons, then what? The owner nodded her head towards the van and Poison followed. She shut the doors behind him, and sat on the floor before him. They sat cross-legged like children might but a thick fog of tension hung over them. They were silent for longer than Poison would’ve liked; before he could say something, the owner said solemnly, “First things first, love. Given the circumstances, I will be blunt. I’ll save your brother.”

Poison jumped at her words, mouth open to say something. “But here lies the hard part. You’ll have to part with something of equal value. There are three things off the top of my head that I can think of. You’ll have to pick one.”

“Equal value of what?”

“Life.”

Kobra. She wanted something equal to his brother’s life. Poison fidgeted, staring her down. Her bargain was high and oddly spiritual; Poison began to wonder if he had wandered into one of those shops owned by the crazed religious freaks, the ones who thought they possessed some kind of special power. He looked at the tiny woman sitting there. She looked like a regular Killjoy; a shock of purple hair, an orange vest and dark boots, more than a few rips in her galaxy print stockings. She didn’t look at all like a figure with the kind of power she was talking about. “Life for a life?”

“Soul for a soul. It’s a steep price, love. Would you be willing to pay it?”

Poison’s thoughts went to Kobra back at the diner. He didn’t need Ghoul to finish what he had been saying; he knew. Kobra was waiting for him, life seeping out of him on the spot. The pneumonia had gotten worse, he’d known it before Ghoul had even said anything. Jet would’ve taken him aside if he had still been back at the diner, pulled him away from Kobra’s bedside and asked him what he wanted to do when-

“I will.”

The owner gave him a blank slate face, as unreadable as her eyes behind her goggles, and nodded.

“Then let’s get started.”

 

 

 

The voices in the other room were what woke Kobra up. He grunted, blinking his eyes open, rolling his sore shoulders and exhaling deeply. He stretched, making a deep growl as his vertebrae popped the pressure out and lay back when he was finished. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing; it was quiet enough to hear his heartbeat in his ears.

_Thump…thump….thump_

In time with the _in, out, in, out_ of his lungs-

Kobra’s eyes flew open. Sitting up, he pressed a hand to his chest, breathing in deeply. The pressure that had filled his lungs just the day before, the headache that had wrapped itself around his head, the soreness in his joints-it was all gone. Gone, just like that.

Kobra threw the covers back and awkwardly shuffled from the mattress. He stumbled towards the voices in the greater part of the diner, his bare feet padding along the floor in near silence. In the front of the diner, Jet was standing at the counter, messing with his transmitter in hand, while Ghoul stood outside looking down the street almost expectantly. Kobra struggled to find his voice above a whisper. “Jet,” he called, “Jet.”

He tapped him on the shoulder, making him jolt upright and whirl around to face him. “Kid? What are you doing up? You should be back in bed.” Jet moved to press the back of his hand to his forehead, which Kobra didn’t dodge, and furrowed his brow in obvious confusion. “I’m feeling great, man,” Kobra said, a lopsided grin on his face. Jet’s furrowed brow deepened. “What?”

“It’s crazy, huh?” Kobra glanced out at Ghoul, who was moving back towards the diner. “What’s going on?” He looked around, ignoring Jet who kept trying to grab his face so that he could look at his eyes and check his throat, and finally met his eyes with a vaguely confused look on his face. “Where’s Poison?” He foggily recalled asking for him the night before; at some point, he’d called Poison’s name in a fever haze, hearing a voice in his cotton-stuffed head that he didn’t think sounded like his own. He’d asked the same thing the night before. Where’s Poison?

Jet hummed quietly as he looked into Kobra’s eyes for any signs of the sickness that had clouded them. Ghoul came bustling inside bringing the dusty scent of the desert with him. “I didn’t see anything. Did you get a frequency-“ he stopped when he saw Kobra up and staring at him. “Hey, kid! Shouldn’t you be resting? How’re you feeling?”

“Your fever’s broken,” Jet interjected. “And your eyes look clear. How’s your breathing; let me hear you breathe in deep.” Kobra breathed in, locking eyes with Ghoul while Jet pressed an ear to his chest. “What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

Jet shushed him. “Be quiet for a minute.”

“No, what’s going on? Where’s my brother?”

Ghoul and Jet exchanged glances and Kobra felt icy fingers creeping up his spine and his lungs filling with ice water. Jet was the one who spoke first. “We don’t know. He ran out last night, took the keys and drove off. We haven’t seen him since.”

“Why?”

“You weren’t doing so hot last night, kiddo,” Ghoul said. “It was a scary few hours…he thought…I mean, we thought…” Ghoul exhaled heavily, but Kid already knew. Hell, he had felt it, felt like he was slipping away into something unfathomable. It had been a scary few hours, indeed. “Poison freaked out. He couldn’t take it and had to get away, I guess. The last time I talked to him was on the transmitters last night. You kept calling for him, but he wasn’t here, so I called him to tell him to come home.” Ghoul furrowed his brow. “He…he said he was on his way.”

Kobra felt the ice water in his lungs rise into his throat. His skin felt like it was crawling on his bones, inching and scrunching like he was suddenly too small to fit. Awful scenario after awful scenario played in his head; maybe bandits had chased him down, what if he was lying dead in a ditch somewhere with some scumbag driving through the desert with the Trans Am? What if he was stranded somewhere? What if he never came back? What if what if what if-

“Have you gone looking for him?”

“Haven’t been able to. He had the Trans Am,” Ghoul said gently. “We asked Dr. D to tell people to keep an eye out for him, let us know if they see him. Until we hear otherwise, that’s all we can do.” Kobra nodded slowly, running a hand through his hair. He felt his insides twisting up inside of him like a pit of coiled snakes, clenching around his heart. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t dispel the what-ifs clouding his mind, and the worry that Poison wasn’t alright made him so nauseous that he worried he might be sick right then and there. As he shuffled back to the kitchen, where he and Poison slept, he heard Ghoul mutter to Jet behind his back, “Poison doesn’t even know if Kid’s alright; Phoenix Witch help him,” and Jet’s voice, “Help them both; they both need some kinda miracle right now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How is it? I like comments, too. :)


	2. Where I Should Find Peace

Counting on Stars

 

Poison wasn’t sure what he was expecting when the shop owner took his soul. He guessed he was expecting something with more grandeur, something more ethereal, considering the circumstances. A contract signed with a drop of blood, maybe?

 

_“Then let’s get started,” said the shop keeper._

_S_ _he paused momentarily. “You’re quite sure? This isn’t a decision that bears regret well. Surviving without a soul can be a tricky process; you might be able to walk and talk, but you won’t be yourself,” said the owner. “You won’t be what makes you you. Like a human-shaped husk. Sometimes people go crazy. Once I start the trade, it won’t be an easy fix.” Poison breathed in and nodded. “I’m sure. I guess I should be more specific when I mean I want you to-“_

_“No, I’ve got it. No tricks here, love,” the owner shook her wrists, jangling the bracelets that littered her arms and grinned. “No tricks up my sleeve at all. Your brother will be fine.” She stood and went to one of the shelves, took down a tin cigarette box and opened it up. From this, she plucked out a tiny red flower and held it up for Poison to see. “Atomic red for the atomic redhead.” She closed the tin and replaced it on the shelf, returning to her seat. “Now, you might feel a little chill after this is all said and done,” she tapped Poison’s chest, “in here. Might experience some loss of breath. Consciousness too, maybe. Is that alright?” Poison flinched. “Um…sure. What do I have to do?” The shop owner gave him a small smile and gesture for his hand. “Open your palm. You just have to hold this. Do you have any idea what this is?” The red flower looked dried out and mostly dead, like it had been made with paper. It was barely the size of the owner’s thumbnail. “It’s a desert fire,” she said. “These are rather rare. There are tiny patches of it that grow in Zone Seven, but it’s indigenous to the Phoenix Witch herself. They grow in patches that can spread for a stone’s throw and if you look at them from very far away, it looks like a fire has spread across the desert; that’s where it gets its name from.”_

_“It’s said that the Phoenix Witch’s followers learned how to use the desert flowers as a way of preserving the lost souls of the desert people a long time ago. It’s since gone mostly out of practice, but a few of them have retained the knowledge. Are you ready?” Poison nodded and held his breath. She hadn’t told him that this would hurt, but he wanted to brace himself for the chill she said would follow. He remembered something then. “Wait,” he said. The owner froze and looked up at him. “I want to know what’ll happen to me once I…you know.”_

_The shop owner nodded. “The desert fires stay alive once plucked by the inheritance of a wayward soul. Once I finish,” she held up the flower, “this will be you.” Poison thought about what she had said just a few minutes ago, about going crazy and the chill. Would he be alright wandering the desert like a zombie, cold and batshit crazy? He couldn’t go home and pretend to act like himself; he would remain right here, in this flower in the owner’s caravan._

_But Kobra would be alive. He would be alive; he would move on. And that was better than him being cold and six feet under, a ray of sunshine in Poison’s life tragically trapped under the ground. That was so much better._

_With a nod of approval, he watched as the shop owner placed the desert fire into his hand and smiled. “Here we go.”_

 

 

There had been no real impressive display of magic or whatever. He’d seen the red desert fire seem to spring to life, slowly bloom like blood seeping from a wound in his open palm, and he’d proven the shop owner right: he felt a slight chill in his chest now, like he’d just swallowed ice. And he was pretty sure he’d hit his head when he nodded off. He’d been out of it for only a few minutes, but in that time, he’d missed the violet owner open the little crystal vial hanging from her neck and deposit his desert fire inside. She’d remembered to sit him upright as best she could against the right wall while he was in his momentary daze and now offered him a package of clear liquid from a Better Living model cooler in the front of the van. “For your head.”

Poison accepted it gratefully and pressed it to the back of his head. As he hummed at the cooling chill, the owner looked him over. “How do you feel?” she asked. Poison swept his eyes around the van. “I don’t know. I feel that chill you were talking about. Do you think I look like a crazy person?” The owner laughed. “No. No, you look like you did before this began. Significantly less worried though.”

“Oh!” Poison suddenly remembered. “Kobra! Is he…I mean, he’s not-“

“Don’t worry, love. Your brother will be fine. Trust in the Witch.” She pursed her lips. “But, um, on the subject of her, there’s something we have to discuss.” Poison nodded hesitantly. As long as Kobra was going to recover, he knew that nothing else mattered. But a fear niggled in the back of his mind. What if the payment hadn’t been enough? What if they were too late? Poison shook his head, forced himself not to think like that. Kobra would be fine. He would be okay.

“Your soul is something different, Poison,” the owner said bluntly, moving around up front again. She must have been making a cup of that cactus tea for herself; Poison had spied an ancient hotplate and a small iron pan sitting up there near the cooler. “When you were trading off, the Witch told me something,” the owner said, then she laughed nervously. “Bet you think I’m crazy, huh?” Poison shook his head. He’d never really been the religious type, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t have some experience with the Witch (albeit, that had been a near-death experience). “No. I don’t think you’re crazy.” The owner returned to her seat with a tin cup of the clear tea. “She told me that you’re a special soul Poison. Whatever you did to get in her favor must’ve been huge, because she won’t accept your soul just yet.” Poison felt the panic rising. So it hadn’t been enough.

“Don’t worry, though. Kobra will be okay. She won’t accept your soul, but a bargain’s a bargain. Your soul is still here,” the owner tapped the vial around her neck, “but you haven’t just become a hollow vessel full of chill and desert madness. You’ll be you,” her smile quickly faded as Poison’s face lit up in surprise. “But there’s a catch. To stay this way, you have to stay with your soul.” She tapped the vial again. “Here.”

Poison stared at her for a moment before her words sank in. “So…I can’t go back at all? I can’t go back to the diner with the others?” The owner frowned and sipped her tea. “’Fraid not. That’s the price for Kobra to get better.” She watched him quietly as realization set in. “I can’t just take the desert fire with me?” Poison asked. As if he had just made a grab for the vial, the owner reached up quickly and shrank away. Poison held up his hands. “Whoa, easy. I wasn’t gonna just take it and run. Just wondering.” The owner sighed and relaxed. “Oh, I know. I always hated these kinds of deals. I never liked these kinds of things. But, it won’t be so bad! You’ll learn a lot of things, lots of things! I promise you won’t regret it.”

“I’d never regret taking care of Kobra,” Poison said. “I’m not sad or upset, or anything. Only really relieved. I’d do anything for that kid; I’m just happy he gets to see another day with the others.” A smile slowly spread across the owner’s face. “Oh, kiddo,” she said, and something tightened in Poison’s chest. “I promise,” she was saying, “I’ll make this as easy on you as possible. On my word as a keeper of souls.” Poison’s thoughts wandered back to the diner and the others. He remembered something and idea took root in his head. “Thank you,” he told her, “I guess since we’ll be around for a while, we should tell each other our names.” The owner nodded and tried to smile brightly. “I’m called Nicotine Deadly,” she said, “and I’ve not heard of you.”

Poison offered his hand to shake. “Party Poison. And I was wondering if I could…”

 

 

 

 

Kobra rolled over on his side with a deep sigh. Jet had made him go back and rest, despite his assurance that he was _fine._ Now he was lying awake on the mattress, having not slept a wink, and hating every passing moment that there was no word on Poison or his whereabouts. He hadn’t really thought much of his miraculous recovery-it did seem odd by all means and none of the guys had ever seen anything like it-but it was irrelevant as long as his brother was out there in god knew what kind of situation. He made sure to lay around quietly enough to hear the distant hum of an engine should a vehicle come along. The only good thing about this afternoon was that Cherri Cola had brought over a bike that the guys could use, having heard the broadcast they’d asked Dr. Death Defying to send out about Poison. _“Just return it in one piece, alright?”_

Ghoul had gone out with it, leaving Jet to stay with Kobra in case something happened. Now, Kobra didn’t know where Jet was. He hadn’t seen him for quite a few minutes now; maybe he was rooting around in one of the closets or out in the back doing whatever. In any case, he had made it clear that he would stay close to Kobra in case he needed him, so he doubted he would be too far away.

So this must have been him walking in or out through the front door.

Disappointment weighed Kobra down. He couldn’t find it in himself to get up and check-he hadn’t heard the telltale grumble of a car engine coming to a halt outside. The jingle from the bells above the door finally died away and Kobra heard the softest of footsteps moving around up front. He sighed. This was literally the worst feeling in the world; worse than the steel wool that had been stuffed in his lungs during the pneumonia spell, worse than that time he’d broken his arm when he and Poison were kids. The mysterious absence of his brother topped them all.

The footsteps were close, right outside the kitchen now. Kobra pretended to be asleep; this would be the fifth time that Jet popped in to check up on him. He knew he meant well-only eight hours ago Kobra had been a step away from being dusted by an infection of all things-but he was getting tired of them worrying over him when, one, he was doing fine, honestly, and two, there were other things they needed to be fussing over, like where the hell Poison was. Kobra shut his eyes and breathed out softly, wishing that Jet would hurry and go; as ironic as it seemed, Kobra just wanted to be alone then.

The footsteps stopped before the window-where orders might have been submitted back in the diner’s heyday-and froze. Kobra guessed it was Jet looking in on him without waking him up. Then the footsteps were gone, retreating the way they came, and the chime from the front door was all that was left. Kobra opened his eyes and stared across at Poison’s empty mattress. Thrown haphazardly across it was the threadbare blanket and t-shirt he slept in, still rumpled and wrinkled from the last time he’d been there. It was actually a favorite shirt of Poison’s, red like his hair and emblazoned with a faded band logo on the chest; Kobra had gotten it for him for his birthday one year. He hoped that he would come back and wear it again, even for one more time.

A sudden shuffle of footsteps approached the kitchen doors and suddenly Jet was poking his head inside. “Oh, hey, you’re still awake,” he said quietly. Kobra resisted a sigh and nodded. “Yeah, I’m awake. Didn’t you just come over?” Jet shook his head. “Nope. I’ve been out back.”

Kobra sat up quickly, a suspicious terror filling him. “What? Did you just come in? Like, right now?” Jet nodded. “Is Ghoul back?” Kobra asked. “Nope. Not yet.”

Kobra missed the very last word out of Jet’s mouth scrambling up and off of the mattress, nearly bowling Jet over as he made a beeline for the front of the diner. “What? What is it?” he called. Kobra burst out through the front doors, looking up and down the street wildly. Any thought that it could have been a thief or some wayward scumbag never even crossed Kobra’s mind. He could hear Jet Star running out behind him, calling him, but he didn’t respond. There was no one here.

There were tire tracks in the dust, but no distant sound of an engine rumble. There were footprints in the dirt, from the front of the diner that disappeared around to the back, but they must have been Jet’s. Kobra felt his feet move on their own, propelling him towards the back of the diner, despite the doubt taking root in his mind- _it’s just Jet, they’re just Jet’s, they’re Jet’s prints, no one’s been there_ -like that would cushion the blow.

Jet came tearing after him, only a few steps behind him, and was there to grab his arm when he nearly slipped from stopping so suddenly in his tracks. They stood in stunned silence, staring in shock, before Kobra suddenly began running again, this time back towards the front of the diner. Jet heard him calling Poison’s name as he ran, but he couldn’t find it in himself to move his feet. It felt as though his legs had been made of concrete and an ominous feeling that he couldn’t quite explain burned in his stomach as he stared at the Trans Am, blinking in the sun, and as empty as he suddenly felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit short; decided to keep this up for a little while longer. I still like comments. :)


	3. First Light

When Ghoul arrived at the diner, he found it in such a deep gloom that it was nearly tangible. The sun hadn’t begun to sink beyond the horizon yet, it was still rather sunny outside, but inside the diner, Ghoul swore that it was as if a shadow had fallen over the place. He dropped the motorcycle keys on the counter, having greeted a rather spooked looking Jet sitting at one of the booths and warily asked, “What’s going on? Did something happen? Why didn’t you call?” Jet, sitting at the booth closest to the doors, shook his head. “Because if I called I wouldn’t even know what to say.”

Ghoul furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?” Jet jerked his thumb towards the back of the diner. “Check out back.” Ghoul went around back, trotting at a fairly brisk pace as his nerves frayed themselves in anxiety. When he came back, Jet hadn’t moved an inch. “Are you serious?” Ghoul said, his voice high with disbelief. “Did he come back? I mean, is he okay?” He was already moving towards the kitchen when Jet stopped him. “He’s not back there. He hasn’t been back-or, I mean, I guess he has, since the Trans Am is back.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know what’s going on right now, and I don’t know what to do. And Kobra’s shut down in the kitchen. It jarred him pretty bad; he said he heard someone come in, but he didn’t get up to see who it was. He thinks it was Poison.”

“Then where did he go?” said Ghoul, throwing his arms into the air in defeat. Clearly, he wasn’t comprehending either. “Did he just up and start walking through the desert?”

 

 

 

 

Poison watched the horizon creep closer through the windshield from his place behind the passenger’s seat. He was leaning with his elbows on the headrest, arms folded, while Nicotine sat in the driver’s seat guiding them down the road. He hummed quietly, a warmth bubbling inside him. Kobra was alright. He’d been sleeping so soundly that Poison hadn’t wanted to wake him; it had felt like months since he’d seen him sleep so peacefully-pneumonia had stolen any semblance of a good rest for him, tossing and turning him day and night in a restless, fitful haze. Granted, he felt a guilt stirring inside-he wished he could’ve stayed long enough to explain himself when Kobra woke up and the guys returned, but Nicotine had been insistent that they keep going. At the time, he hadn’t been sure why they had to get going so quickly, and hadn’t asked on account of the entire situation happening so quickly.

He turned his head to Nicotine. “Are you nomadic?”

Nicotine glanced up, a tip of the head to acknowledge him since it couldn’t be shown in her eyes. “I am. It’s going to take a bit of adjusting on your part, I’m sure,” she said. “Isn’t kind of dangerous to be moving from one place to another?” Poison asked. Nicotine grinned. “How do you mean?”

“Well, you never know where you’re next meal will come from, for one-but in the desert, that’s kind of an everyday thing. Still, moving around like this must mess up the way you find food and water, and probably soils relationships a bit, right?”

“You’re right.”

She refrained from saying more then.

“Is it because of what you do?”

“What do I do?”

Poison shrugged. The sign for the Wish Bucket had promised curiosities and cures, and the name suggested that Nicotine might change someone’s life in some way, and after the last night, Poison was sure there was some kind of spiritual magic stuff going on, something that Nicotine was manipulating in order to leave Killjoys in a better state than she found them because, _damn_ , it could be so hard out in the desert, and it was hard to find someone still wandering around with a caring heart. “You help people.”

Nicotine smiled in the rearview mirror and said nothing more on the subject. Poison wondered how far they were from the diner now, or even if they had crossed the border into one of the other zones yet. He wondered if he had done the right thing just leaving the diner without even waking Mikey to tell him that he would be gone for a while. He frowned slightly. He should’ve written a letter or something. At least they had the Trans Am back, so they wouldn’t be stranded at the diner. He at least owed them that.

 

 

 

 

 

“Where are we now?”

Nicotine looked up from threading a needle and gazed down the street at the little town they had parked in the middle of. “Paradiso Valley, I think. Little town in Zone two. Quite nice. Serves a lot of good desert lizard dishes too.” At the mention of food, Poison remembered something suddenly. “Oh, I just noticed, but, I haven’t been hungry at all since that night.”

That had been a week ago. Poison and Nicotine had been driving through the desert, stopping only a few times when someone had flagged them down. Once they’d come across a small group of them camping in the desert, the flames leaping into the sky, the colorful characters dancing around it to some music churning from an old radio. That had been an interesting night. One of the killjoys, a white-blonde named Roxy Rocket, had traded a little wooden doll shaped like a robot for what Poison recognized as bona-fide bubblegum from one of the glass baby food jars, something that Battery City didn’t even carry in its manufacturing catalogues. He hadn't seen actual gum since the spin-off pieces of it (pretty much edible plastic) that had been sold in the City before it was discontinued. It was pink and wrapped in squares of paper as big as Poison’s thumbnail, and it smelled _wonderful_. It was a little stale on account of being rather old, but it was probably still just as sugary as it looked.

Strangely enough, after the thought left him, Poison didn’t feel the least bit hungry. “Is it kind of like being dead?” he asked. Nicotine laughed and shook her head. “Well, no. You’re not dead, but without your soul, your body doesn’t have to work as hard to sustain itself. You’ll still have to eat, but not nearly as often as you use to, which,” she pinched his wrist good-naturedly, observing the thinness of it, “doesn’t look like it was that much to begin with.” Poison shrugged. He knew she was right; the four had been eating in small portions for as long as he could remember, and gone completely without for much longer. It would be nice to eat quite so often, he guessed. That meant more for everyone else.

Paradiso Valley-he’d never heard of it. It favored a little roughneck town, with buildings made from old wood and even older foundations, scrap metal and whatever else. Poison thought it looked like an old western town, like the kind he’d seen in some of Kobra’s older books, the kinds that cowboys and bandits rode around saving and stealing from. From the outside, it looked less like paradise and more like a ghost town, hardly fitting of its serene –sounding name, but the huge rock formations that loomed over the city offered the most breathtaking view of the desert he’d ever seen and even deeper within, the people there seemed so…happy. It was a homey town, full of life and exuberance even with the hardships of an irradiated desert lurking on the corners of the place. A few children ran here and there, playing in the street, while some people sat outside by vans and dust-caked vehicles of all kinds with makeshift tables erected and laden with items.

Poison had never seen some of the things that the people in Paradiso Valley were selling here. He wondered, like with all of Nicotine’s wares, where they had gotten them. Were they handmade? Did they come from some faraway place? He guessed that was what made the little town and the Wish Bucket so interesting.

He and Nicotine had parked near a small home, overlooking a few scampering children, with the back doors of the van flung open. Nicotine sat in the doorway, currently sewing delicately and carefully a piece of corduroy fabric that had been coated in dust and dirt, while Poison sat on the crate by the door, the same crate from the night he’d first encountered the Wish Bucket, and watched her. “Will I need to sleep?” he asked suddenly, an addition to his earlier question about having to eat. “Yes, but not often, either. Are you feeling tired?” Nicotine asked, tugging the needle and thread to tighten a stitch. Poison shook his head. The chill in his bones had become more and more bearable as time had gone on, as well. If anything, Poison felt wide awake.

He chanced another question. “Do you get hungry or tired?” he asked Nicotine. She held out a hand to him and he handed her the scissors lying next to the crate. “I do. I’m just not hungry or tired right now.” She snipped the thread and tied it off with nimble fingers, holding up the corduroy doll in satisfaction. “Ruby! Your doll is finished!”

One of the little girls playing in the street suddenly stopped her chasing and scampered to the van, a broad smile on her face. She accepted the doll with gratuitous thanks and went on playing, while Nicotine stacked the fabric patches up on her lap to return to the box she kept them in. Poison squinted up at the sunlight shining down outside. “Sure is bright out today,” he murmured. Nicotine followed his gaze. “Is it?”

Poison wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still going. This chapter is rather short-sorry about that. As always, I like comments. :)


	4. Find Our Way Back

Kobra gazed up at the orange sun, his fingers curled tightly around his transmitter. He was alone in the back of the diner, lying back on the Trans Am’s hood with his back against the windshield. He knew Ghoul would’ve had a fit if he saw him doing that, would’ve ripped him a new one for scuffing up the glass with his jacket and scratching the hood with his boots, but the diner had become too stuffy what with Kobra having been bedridden inside the kitchen for almost a week and the suffocating anxiety that wrapped around his head like a wreath; he couldn’t have cared less. He would’ve have even gone off somewhere on his own instead, but he was terrified of leaving the diner and having the desert swallow him whole like it had to Poison.

He’d tried Poison’s frequency on the transmitter more than once-he’d counted five calls in the past hour-and had been disappointed each time when nothing came through but lonely static. Kobra thumped his head back against the windshield and closed his eyes. He hadn’t told the others, but he had been harboring some guilt for not getting up to go and see who had been inside the diner; even if he had been sure it was only Jet, he should’ve at least called out to be sure. And what’s more, why didn’t Poison stay behind? Why did he leave the Trans Am and then disappear? Maybe it hadn’t been him at all-what if a killjoy who was actually loyal to the four had found it out in the desert and been kind enough to drop it off? Kobra grimaced at the thought; it was actually worse to think that someone had found the Trans Am and Poison had never even been there. Kobra sighed and briefly considered calling on Poison’s frequency again, digging his palm into his eyes. He relented, trying for one more time before giving up in defeat and the next thing he knew, he was waking up to the stars shining down like diamonds above.

                                                                                 

He’d been out there for most of the night and no one had come to wake him, which he was somewhat grateful for. He briefly wondered what the others had been doing the whole time as he walked back to the front of the diner. The front was mostly empty; Kobra figured Fun Ghoul was staying up late, holed up in the garage, pictured him leaned over an old vehicle fixing the engine inside, the green light from the neon fixture on the wall filling the room with an eerie glow. Jet was probably taking inventory in the back, tallying the number of items that the four had left within the confines of the storage closet and the old, long defunct cooler on a yellowed slip of paper. Kobra wandered into the kitchen and dropped onto his mattress with a huff. He lay on his side, his hands going for the transmitter on his belt for the umpteenth time. He stared at the device in the dark, the little red blip that signaled the machine was turned on blinking every so often to a rhythm that mimicked a heartbeat, and thought better of it. Kobra sighed, laid it on the floor by the mattress and tried to fall back to sleep.

 

Someone was shaking him awake. Kobra grunted, swatting feebly at them, and barely registered his name being called. “Kobra,” Ghoul said, still shaking him by the shoulders, “Kobra, wake up!”

Kobra finally blinked himself awake and glared with sleepy eyes at the dark-haired killjoy. “I’m up, I’m up-what’s going on?” His grogginess immediately cleared when he registered the expression on Ghoul’s face. “What happened?”

“We’re going out. Jet didn’t want to, but I thought I should wake you up so you could come with us,” he said. Kobra nodded dazedly, blatantly confused as to what was going on, and sat up quickly, grabbing his transmitter and clipping it on, then going for his boots. “Where are we going?” he asked, already lacing up on boot on his foot. His heartbeat was already skyrocketing in his chest as excitement burned through his veins like electricity. Ghoul pulled open the kitchen door, offering a small wedge of light to shroud him as he stood in the doorway. Kobra couldn’t see past the shadows across Ghoul’s face, but the twinkle in his eye gave him away almost immediately.

“We got a message on the transmitter,” Ghoul said. “Someone just spotted Poison in Paradiso Valley.”

 

 

 

Candlelight danced across Poison’s face as he sat waiting for Nicotine. Earlier that day, they had been sought out by a man who had begged her to help him and his family, one member of which was ill. When he told them that his daughter was wasting away in her bed as they spoke, a pang shot through Poison’s chest as he thought of the days that Kobra had spent in the same condition, looking more like a corpse than a sick man, already dead and ready for his grave. It had been an honest relief when Nicotine had agreed to help and would come by the man’s home at nightfall.

The stars had begun peeking past the deep orange and purple of the approaching night sky and the temperature had begun to cool. Cicadas’ chirping came singing in through the open doors of the Wish Bucket, seemingly lulled by the incense scents wafting through them. Nicotine had asked Poison to light one of the scented sticks while she prepared for her visit-“Helps soothe the senses,” she told him, with a gesture that he was sure was a wink behind her goggles-and now it sat burning at the tip in a tiny wooden holder on one of the makeshift seats.

Poison had been watching the little flame burn for quite a while now, sitting in silence while he contemplated where he had found himself in life suddenly. It wasn’t what he had ever expected, being half-dead while traversing a nuclear desert with a keeper of souls. It sounded like something from a strange B-movie.

“They say that you can see things within flames,” Nicotine said, sidling up next to Poison unbeknownst to him. She hefted a small knapsack over her shoulder and continued, “What do you see?”

“What kinds of things am I supposed to see?”

“I don’t know. They just say ‘things’.”

“They?”

Nicotine giggled and shrugged. “Y’know. _They_. We’re going to be late if we stay around too much longer.”

They left the Wish Bucket behind and walked through the streets of the town. Poison offered to carry Nicotine’s knapsack for her, to which politely declined, saying she wasn’t some old crone-she could handle herself. It was then, with that remark, that Poison was reminded that he knew little to nothing about who Nicotine Deadly really was. She was a tiny, petite thing, as most people tended to be out in the desert where food was not very plentiful. When asked where all the treasures in her van had been found, she simply replied that she had been to many places from all over, not just the desert and even farther than the zones. That in itself raised the question: how old was she? She looked as young as, or younger than, Poison himself, and she seemed to hate being called ma’am by the other killjoys. She responded to the nickname 'Nic', which was young sounding itself, and what remained hidden under her goggles was still a mystery.

Poison looked up the sky, suddenly wanting to test a hunch that had been bothering him. “It’s beautiful outside. All the stars in the sky, they look kinda like diamonds,” he said, keeping an eye on Nicotine’s response. She didn’t look up. “I’ve never seen those before,” she admitted.

“Stars?”

“Diamonds.”

“Lots of people out here haven’t. When I used to live in the city, sometimes I would see them in the jewelry store windows. My mom never had any, but we always saw them in the windows and on the ladies who spoke on television programs.”

“I’ve never had much use for things like that. They don’t help me and they don’t help anyone else,” Nicotine said. Poison shrugged as she stopped in front of a small house with lamplight in the window. “They’re nice to look at.”

“I mean, I guess.”

Maybe using stars wasn’t the best way to test his theory after all.

Poison knocked on the door, since Nicotine just kept brushing her fingers over the wood and not actually doing anything effectual with it. Immediately, he worried that maybe she had been doing some kind of spiritual magic type thing, like sensing for mad vibes or something. When the door opened, a man stood against the light pouring from the inside, his face flushing in relief when he saw Nicotine and Poison standing there.

“Oh, it’s you! Come in, come in!”

He ushered them inside and shut the door behind them. The tiny home was cozy, well lit by the various lanterns scattered around on tables and fruit crates. In one corner of the building, a curtain system consisting of blankets and scarves being hung over a line running diagonally from one wall to another made what must have served as a bedroom of sorts. The man led them over to it, pulling back a purple blanket and nodding towards it. “Our June is right back here,” he said. It was tiny and cramped in the space behind the curtain, but somehow an entire mattress had been concealed behind it, and piled atop the mattress was a tangle of limbs and bodies. Upon the curtain being drawn back, four heads of dark curly hair poked up. There were at least five children curled up on the same mattress, four of which were curiously staring up at Poison and Nicotine, and one that hadn’t yet moved.

“Move back, children,” said the man, shooing them away. “Someone’s come to see June.” The children scattered, crawling under the curtains and out of sight, but four pairs of dark eyes returned, peering under the blankets curiously. June was spindly with long brown arms that glowed with pallor and sickness. Her dark hair clung to her forehead with sweat, and when Nicotine had finally placed her pack by the mattress and reached out to touch her head, she immediately drew back with a frown.

“She’s burning up,” she murmured, opening the knapsack and digging around inside. “Have you got any water?”

The man nodded and ducked out from the curtains. Nicotine produced a small pinkish looking piece of something from the pack and set it aside, then pulled out a tin cup identical to the ones she and Poison used for cactus tea and gave it to the redhead. “We’re making tea,” she said. “Yarrow. It’s good for fevers. Makes you sweat. Opens pores. Speeds up fever breaks.” She pulled a square of cloth out of the bag and unfolded it to reveal a white flowering plant inside. “We’ll brew this and have her drink it while we try to keep her somewhat cool with a sponge-down. That’s what this is,” she said, holding up the pink thing. Poison nodded. “I’ve seen those before. In the city. Those were yellow, though.”

Nicotine shook her head. “Those were synthesized. This one used to be alive. They live underwater. We need to get June’s fever down, so the cool water will help and the yarrow will help her sweat it out faster.”

Together, they went to work, Poison wetting the sponge with the little water that the man brought back and dabbing it across June’s forehead and around her armpits, and Nicotine preparing the yarrow and heating the water over one of the lamps scattered around the house. When they were done and June had begun sipping the yarrow tea-she made a face at the first sip, to which Nicotine smiled gently and coaxed her to take another-Nicotine ducked from behind the curtains and talked to the man, while Poison put the rest of her supplies back into the knapsack. He was in the process of storing the sponge away when the other children began emerging from under the curtains. Silently, they crawled inside and perched on the mattress, eying June first and then Poison with curious eyes.

“Hi,” Poison said, smiling at them. They blinked at him, but said nothing along the lines of a greeting.

“Your hair is red,” said the smallest. Poison nodded. “It is. Do you like it?”

“I like her hair,” said the child, pointing past Poison in the general direction of Nicotine. “It’s purple. I like purple.”

“I like your hair,” piped up another child. “Red is pretty. It’s my name.”

Poison grinned and opened his mouth to ask the other children’s names, but the curtain drew back suddenly, revealing Nicotine. She nodded at him, a slight tilt of the head that signaled a need to talk.

“She’s only got a case of fever. It’s probably nothing serious, and as long as she keeps drinking the tea and keeping cool, she should be okay,” Nicotine told him. “We’re pretty much done here.” She paused and breathed out a laugh. “The father said he would’ve done anything to have his daughter get better.” She toyed with the little vial around her neck, the flowers still stained like red droplets inside, and Poison cast a concerned glance in the direction of the curtains.

“He couldn’t-I mean, you wouldn’t let him would you?”

“It’s his choice. It’s not my place to tell him no if he wanted to make a bargain.”

“Doesn’t he know the consequences? He can’t afford that kind of deal with five kids left alone,” Poison said. Nicotine frowned and sighed. “Well, I can’t exactly tell him no-“

Someone screamed outside, sharp and wailing, a horrified shriek that echoed through the walls and windows and into the night. Poison ducked, like the scream was tangible and would fly over his head, and ran to the door. He didn’t need to look out into the night to figure out what was happening. He heard the call loud and clear ringing through the night like a siren, and as it reverberated through his ears and chilled him to his core, he knew a fear unlike any other, not only for himself, but for the family huddled at his back.

“ _SCARECROWS!”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, it's me again. I'm actually planning another something after this, because this story won't be going on for much longer. Heck, it was only supposed to be a one-shot. But hopefully you'll like what comes next, chapters and new story included. As always, I like comments. :)


	5. Fire Burning Bright

For a moment, all was silent. In the split second between the echo of the scream and the first screeching whistle of a laser beam shooting through the air, Poison wondered if it had just been a false alarm.

Then the town of Paradiso Valley was alive with screams.

The air became singed with laser blasts thumping off of buildings and doors, cut off screams in the street that ended with sickening thuds against the ground. It sounded like a riot right outside the man’s doorstep, and Poison was dreading the entire scene. June and her siblings were squealing and cowering behind the curtains, peeking out with frightened brown eyes-poor things had probably never been in a Drac raid before. Poison’s mind raced; he had a sick girl and her four small siblings to look after in the midst of a raid. He wasn’t quite sure about their father, how capable he was at protecting himself and his family, but he would do his best to help them anyway.

Poison pulled back the ragged cloth that served as drapes in the single window near the door and peered out into the night. The sky was alive with color, blazing whites and yellows from the guns in the hands of both Dracs and townspeople, but the people of Paradiso Valley were grossly outmatched. The white of the Draculoids had finally come into view, marching their way down the street, guns in hand, firing at anything that moved or otherwise. Poison turned from the window and focused on the man.

“We can’t leave,” he told him, feeling his heart drop at the look of panic that crossed his face, “we have to hide the kids. They’re small enough to fit someplace where the Dracs won’t look. You have any cellars or something? Anything at all?”

The father nodded wordlessly and pointed at a threadbare rug on the floor. He toed it away to reveal a small square in the wood with a latch on it. Bending down, he unlocked the latch and pulled the door away, calling to his children. He spoke their names so quickly in such speedy succession that Poison was surprised that they had heard any of it and could comply so quickly. They skittered across the floor from under the curtains and quietly slipped inside the dark hole in the floor. The man disappeared behind the curtain and returned a moment later with June in his arms, then they too slid into the dark cellar. Before the man reached up and closed the door after them, he locked eyes with Poison, who nodded once.

Then, he and his family were gone.                                                                                           

Poison then turned back to the door, flinching hard as something crashed against it, and the familiar smell of singed wood reached his nostrils. Instinctively, his hands flew to his belt, and Poison was surprised to find that his gun was still attached to him. It made sense, now that he thought about it-he’d had it with him all this time from the moment he’d stepped out into the desert to escape the thought of Kobra dying in the night till now. Now he held it in his hand, finger on the trigger and stood at the window, eyeing the streets outside for any approaching Dracs. A flash of purple in his peripheral vision momentarily drew his attention away from the scene beyond the glass.

Nicotine was half-crouched, flinching hard every so often, wobbling on her feet as though she might lose her balance. “Nic,” Poison called out to her, “are you okay? What’s going on?”

Nicotine whimpered in response and raised her head enough to catch Poison’s eye. He couldn’t see anything past her goggles, but the expression on her face was one of discomfort, like she was _in pain_. The thumping noise returned to the door, and Poison quickly glanced out the window. A Drac stood outside, shooting at the front door. Trying to get in.

Poison stayed pressed against the wall on the other side of the door, just as the door gave and the Drac stomped inside. He had a split second to hope that all those afternoons sparring with Kobra had paid off-it was a long story, in which Kobra had been insistent about learning how to be better at hand-to-hand combat-before he was driving his elbow into the side of the Drac’s head, sending him smashing against the opposite wall. He doubled over, stumbling on dazed feet, and grunted when Poison grabbed the wild black hair of the white mask and leveraged his knee into the Dracs nose. The Drac fell heavily to the floor, lying unmoving against the wood. Poison winced at the sting in his knee, and gazed out the open door. The street had been overrun with Dracs-why were there so many? What were they even doing this far out into Zone Two?-and some buildings had even begun housing small fires. People came running out from them like roaches from the woodwork, screaming and darting around, trying to avoid the men in sterile white suits.

Leaning out the door, Poison aimed shot after shot at the approaching Dracs, daring to be risky with the ones running up to the house. He tried to aim for the legs and shoulders-he wasn’t trying to kill anyone; he was better than that-but one particularly stubborn Drac moved so suddenly into the path of his line of fire that when straightened up from nearly crumpling to his knees from a blast to his ankle, he was shot in the head.

He lay still in the street, a thin tendril of smoke rising from the scorch mark in the middle of his head. Poison faltered and suddenly the world became no more than outside noise, a dull buzz in Poison’s ears. The Drac was crumpled in the dirt, silent and still. ‘ _It was an accident_ ,’ echoed a voice in Poison’s mind. He hadn’t meant to…if _he hadn’t just moved_! The Drac moved no more, his white, standard issue gun lying limp in his fingers, still smoking with the exhaust of a previously fired shot. But it wasn’t his gun that discharged the next beam. The beam that hit Poison’s shoulder came from another gun from down the street, fired, while Poison had been momentarily caught up in his own mind, by one of the numerous Dracs in the street, as undecipherable as the grains of sand in the desert. Poison cried out, knocking his head against the doorframe, and clutching his shoulder. Beneath his jacket, he could feel the raging stinging sensation igniting sparks of pain across his shoulder and even down his chest. Two scents hit him first. The scent of singed flesh and leather, and the cascading scent of wood smoke… From his place in the doorway, he could see something moving up on the roof. At first, he thought it was a townsperson hiding up on the roof, or a Drac, but the movement was erratic and bright and red. Neither townspeople nor Dracs-most certainly not Dracs-were red.

Poison’s hands grew clammy as the spreading flames licked in his eyes.

Nicotine screamed for him once, drawing his attention away from the blaze dancing mad on the roof. “It’s fire!” she was screaming. “It’s fire!”

She was clutching the vial of flowers around her neck with a vice grip. The roof creaked and groaned above them, and Nicotine had barely enough time to spring to her feet and dodge the wood and debris as it caved in over her and fell in a flaming heap to the floor. How had the fire spread so quickly without them being aware of it? Poison’s thoughts went to the family in the cellar below the floorboards, of June and her siblings being trapped in their hole under the debris, choking on grey smoke and suffocating to death. He raced to the latched door and threw it open, ready to shout for them to get out quickly, but to his shock, no one was there. Confusion crossed his features as he wondered where they had gone in this dark hole, but by the light of the fire that had fallen into the small house, he could see the distinct mouth of a tunnel at the bottom of the hole. The family must’ve escaped through the secret tunnel.

Clever-they would be fine.

Not wasting any more time, Poison turned back to Nicotine, grabbed her hand and raced out into the night. It was a dangerous move, but with the only other option burning to death in the house as it fell apart around them, the Drac’s gunfire was looking like the easiest option with the biggest chance of escape. They ducked any blasts that came their way, racing by memory back to the Wish Bucket, hoping that it hadn’t been raided or blown up. The entire way, Nicotine’s hand stayed clasped around the vial, as though the souls inside might fly out if her fingers didn’t keep them in. Men in white came and went in blurs as they ran past them, townspeople scattering in all directions, trampling over one another in a mad dash for cover and fires blazed over houses as though they were giant candles. It was complete anarchy.

Hope of escape became fleeting as the street grew on and the Wish Bucket was nowhere in sight. Poison paused in the street, whirling around in frantic searching while the Wish Bucket remained out of sight. “Where did it go?”

Nicotine nearly ripped his arm out his socket as she tried to drag him in another direction. “This way,” she panted. “C’mon, this way!”

They ducked into a clearing between two buildings and ran through them to the end, where Poison was certain the Wish Bucket hadn’t been when they had first started out, but was too relieved to have found it to care. Nicotine banged a fist against the back doors and the left door weakly swung open. She shoved it wide the rest of the way and pulled Poison in after her. Had the door never been locked? Poison wasn’t sure of anything about this van or its owner anymore. He went with the flow, pulling the door up and leaving only a hair of space open to keep an eye on anyone who might approach. He thought Nicotine would be driving, already climbing into the driver’s seat and putting the Bucket into drive, but she surprised him, grabbing his shoulder and begging him with a voice choked with sorrow, “Can you get us out of here?”

Poison stared at her, in a bit of a daze, and nodded. “Where to?”

Another shudder shook Nicotine’s shoulders. “Anywhere!”

Poison was in the driver’s seat before she could say anything else. As he peeled out into the dirt roads behind the buildings, a small seed of guilt planted itself in his chest. He should’ve been helping those townspeople fight off the Dracs. This was the only town for miles. The only home that those people had was currently being burned to the ground, and what was Poison doing? Turning tail and running.

A soft noise made him glance into the rearview mirror. Nicotine was sniffing quietly, sobbing into her hands. She looked very small, tiny as she already was, like a broken down child. Vaguely, in the back of his head, she reminded him of someone he once knew, a face that had become grainy and hard to focus on as time had progressed, someone on the verge of being near forgotten. He had to stop Nicotine’s crying. He remembered how much he had hated seeing the nearly forgotten face wet with tears, her grey eyes sad and desolate. He had to keep going for the both of them.

As they neared the end of the town, Poison saw people disappearing into the desert, running on fleet feet into the night, the anguish present on their faces even in the darkness. The town was a blazing torch in the rearview mirror as the Wish Bucket vanished into the night with the last of the townspeople, and was soon a bright red star on the distant horizon. By that time, Nicotine’s crying had grown softer, but Poison pulled the van to a stop anyway. He killed the engine. Nicotine’s cheeks were wet with tears, though the ever-present goggles still remained tight on her head. She didn’t stir when Poison sat down next to her cross-legged and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in close. She didn’t return the embrace, which was fine; she held the vial in both hands, her shoulders shaking with each quiet sniffle. Poison sat with her in the dark, waiting for her tears to subside, and though his head buzzed with a myriad of questions, he kept silent for her sake and rested his chin on her head. He had some thinking to do of his own.

 

 

 

Nicotine’s crying had subsided completely, and Poison left her momentarily to light a few of the lanterns around the van. He used the moonlight to root around in the dashboard for the box of matches Nicotine kept there-there were only three left-and struck one. He frowned at the flame, trying to squash the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach at seeing the flame, the images of the Paradiso citizen’s homes ablaze nagging at him like a sharp pain. When the lanterns were lit well enough for the van to be safe enough to maneuver around, Poison returned to Nicotine in the middle of the floor, and smoothed the stray violet sprigs of hair down on the top of her head.

“Will you be okay?” he asked. Nicotine sniffed and nodded.

“I could make you that cactus tea, if you want?”

Nicotine shook her head again. Poison thought about how Kobra used to shut down and remain silent whenever he was upset or was dealing with some traumatic event. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

Nicotine looked up. “No,” she said, voice thick with tears. “No. No silence.”

Poison nodded, pursing his lips together. Nicotine rubbed at her cheeks. Poison swiped the back of his gloved hand across them, trying to help dry them, though the way the skin seemed to glisten-what was this, glitter?-with an unnatural glow did not go unnoticed. He remembered trying to wipe Kobra’s tears away when he was little and had come crying having scraped his knee, or when their dog had died. A pang of homesickness made him frown. “Alright then,” he said, “no silence. Do you want to talk?”

Nicotine nodded.

“Can I ask you some things?”

She nodded again. “I guess I do have some explaining to do.”

Poison didn’t want her to feel as though she had to answer his questions right away, but she piped up, “It’s okay. You’d find out sooner or later.”

“Have you ever been in a Drac raid?” Poison asked. He figured that was what had traumatized her so. For all of her traveling, Nicotine had probably never stayed anyplace long enough to experience something like that. This was probably her first time in the midst of one. But she nodded her head in confirmation. “Yeah. Once. I didn’t like it. It was years ago. A lot of people died. That’s when I decided to take up my calling as a keeper of souls for the Phoenix Witch. You have to be called. That was when she called me.”

Poison shrugged his shoulder, wincing at the sharp, burning pain, and rubbed a hand across it. He shrugged out of his jacket and glanced at the pinkish splotch of blistered, burned skin with a frown, swiping his hand over it to stop the ache. Nicotine sniffed suddenly, but she wasn’t crying. “I smell burned,” she said. “Burned…skin. Poison, are you hurt?”

Poison furrowed his brow. He hadn’t been all that conspicuous about checking the burn-his jacket made enough noise coming off and he had been pressing a hand to his shoulder for a few moments now. Nicotine reached out, touching his hand over the wound and moved it away to inspect it herself. Poison was confused once more-a recurring theme with her, it seemed. She had to touch it to investigate?

Nicotine was on her feet and moving to the shelf of jars. Poison had never noticed her when she went rifling through the jars with herbs and plants inside, but now, he paid extra attention as she pulled one down and brought it briefly to her nose. She was smelling the jars.

“Aloe Vera,” Nicotine murmured as she unscrewed the cap off one of the jars and reached inside. She pinched up a thin green leaf shaped like a triangle and snapped off one end with an audible _snip_. She replaced the jar and returned to Poison, reaching out and touching his shoulder before her fingers brushed over the irritated burn. “This’ll sting a bit,” she told him and gently applied the snipped end of the aloe plant to the burn. A wet, gel-like substance oozed out of the broken end of the plant, like clear blood, and true to Nicotine’s word, it stung sharply once it made contact with Poison’s shoulder.

He winced, but held still while Nicotine diligently patched him up. They sat in silence until Poison cleared his throat. “Um,” he began quietly. Nicotine hummed to say she’d heard him. “I, uh, I don’t mean any harm, Nic, but,” Poison winced again, but not at the sting of aloe, “Can you see?”

Nicotine paused.

Poison gingerly clarified. “Like, see me?”

Nicotine nodded slowly. “I can see you.”

Poison shook his head. “No, I mean see…you said my hair is red. Remember?”

‘ _Atomic red for the atomic_ _redhead’_ , she’d said. Nicotine nodded. “It is, isn’t it?”

“You’re not sure?”

“What are you really asking, Poison?"

Poison took a deep breath, feeling like he was delving dangerously into her personal business. It was too late to take it back now. “What are you seeing? You have to smell the jars-I noticed that. You looked like you had trouble finding that guy’s door when he went to his house. And, maybe I’m just being picky and dumb, but when you were sewing that little girl’s doll this afternoon, your stitches were uneven. Like, veering into zigzags almost.”

Nicotine twisted her mouth in a perplexed motion. Poison thought of Ghoul when he saw her, he did that all the time when he was deep in thought. She stood and went back to the shelf, humming as she did so. “It’s odd,” she said. “It’s a bit of a strange phenomenon, actually. I heard it was rare, y’know. Souls like us,” Nicotine gestured between Poison and herself, “we’ve got it. Well, obviously not you, _right now,_ but if you were in this crazy occupation of mine…” she trailed off and put the spent piece of aloe vera in a little bin by the shelves. “What am I seeing? I see you. But not _you you_ ; do you get it? I’m seeing _through_ you, _into_ you.”

Nicotine reached up and tugged her goggles over her nose and left them hanging around her neck. What had been behind them all this time made Poison’s head spin, and though his mind echoed with a million words, shocked and in awe, he couldn’t find his voice to express them.

Nicotine had no eyes.

Not like the eyes that everyone else had. They weren’t blue or brown or green or hazel. Poison couldn’t see himself reflected in her eyes, not even a glimpse of the van around them. Nothing but stars; millions and millions of stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're exploring what Nicotine really is. Comments are nice; I like them a lot. :)


	6. Starry Eyes

"They’re called Starry Eyes.”

Nicotine slowly blinked her eyes once and grinned. “Aptly named, don’t you think? That’s what the old followers used to call them. I’ve heard the oldest possessors of the Eyes used to have so many stars in their eyes that it looked like they were full of whole galaxies.” She fiddled with her goggles around her neck and smiled meekly. “I haven’t quite gotten there yet.”

Poison was still unable to see himself in her eyes when she looked at him, and for some reason, that fact alone bothered him, like he wasn’t quite there, and she wasn’t _looking_ at him at all. Nicotine shuffled back and sat across from him, leaning her chin in one hand and looking much more relieved now that the goggles were gone.

“I don’t understand,” Poison said. “How do you…where did…”

“Oh,” Nicotine nodded in the understanding that Poison lacked, “These aren’t stars at all, actually; that’s just the name the Eyes are given. They’re not like the stars up in the sky.” She pointed at her left eye. “These are souls.”

Poison’s jaw dropped. The little white lights in Nicotine’s eyes twinkled just as the stars above might, and for a split second in the midst of his disbelief, a small thought hovered in his mind: if he could see constellations shining at him.

“I thought those flowers, the desert fires, were the things that, um, held souls,” Poison said. Nicotine wiggled her hand in a motion that meant _‘eh…so-so’_. She hummed as she gathered her thoughts together. “There are rules to this kind of thing, Poison. Systems, explanations of the ways things work. There are two types of souls.”

She held up two fingers.

“There are souls like yours and others who haven’t lost their way yet. When I say ‘lost their way’, what I mean is that they are simply wandering around with no expectations of an afterlife. They only live strictly in the moment, down to the millisecond. They are usually the kind of people who are living life in misery and grief. The kind you feel sorry for when you see the lights fading from their eyes; they may as well have lost their souls already,” Nicotine nodded to herself, “but souls like yours are still around and bright. You haven’t lost faith that the silver lining in life is still there. You aren’t lost and wandering. So you can give life to this,” Nicotine tapped the vial around her neck. “That’s what happens to you. But wandering souls become wandering entities. They have no place to go, nowhere to return.”

“As a keeper of souls for the Phoenix Witch, we with Starry Eyes keep the lost souls we are lucky enough to find here,” Nicotine pointed at her left eye. “We’re like foster homes for wandering souls!”

“So you can see people’s souls?” said Poison. “Is that how you can see them?” He was dangerously curious now, relieved to finally have Nicotine’s mind off of the Scarecrow raid and smiling again, but also preoccupied with digging for answers about a world within his own, a concept he knew nothing about. Outside, the faintest whispering-like tiny ‘ _woosh’_ noises whispered in Poison’s ears-prodded in the back of Poison’s mind, but he ignored it. Nicotine continued talking.

“That’s right. It’s like,” Nicotine shrugged, searching for words to explain herself, “Everything has a soul, right? I can see that. I can see the outline of everything through its soul. Like I can see you, a red, person-shaped figure with really, vague, shitty-“

“Language.” (Whoa, where did that come from? Poison remembered having to remind someone of their language around the diner, but he still couldn’t remember her face; why couldn’t he remember her?)

Nicotine grinned sheepishly, much to Poison’s surprise, and apologized. “Sorry. But I can see features. Like dark eyes and where the nose and mouth would be.” She laughed and gestured at Poison. “You’re atomic red. I swear I didn’t know that was the color of your hair too. I can’t really see inanimate objects-those are harder to make out. They look like really, really dark spots in my vision, like shadows in the dark. I can’t see dead things, either. But, dying is another story.” She frowned. “It’s like watching a little flame grow smaller and smaller until it’s pinched out entirely.”

The _woosh_ noise had become whistling now. It sounded as though someone was standing outside of the van, whistling in a cartoonish long fall sort of way.

“Wait, so souls look like whatever they belong to, right? Like people and birds and plants and things?” Poison said. “What do lost souls look like?”

Nicotine didn’t appear to be listening to him. Instead, her head was cocked to one side curiously, a vaguely muddled expression on her face. Without answering, she stood and fetched the crate, the one that doubled as a chair, and pulled it to the middle of the floor. She stepped up to it and reached up to a bright red piece of cloth that been attached to the ceiling. She tugged it away to reveal a latch and a mysterious opening above their heads. Pulling the latch and pressing against the small door with some force that required equal parts Nicotine jumping up and down on the crate to get momentum and Poison’s help, the door eventually popped open and exposed a square of night sky. Nicotine heaved herself up and out of the tiny door and made a small noise of shock.

“What’s wrong?” Poison called to her. She gestured for him to join her up on the roof, so Poison hopped onto the crate, already tall enough atop it to have his head poking out, and wiggled his way through the door. Nicotine pointed at the sky excitedly. “Look, look!”

Little beams of light crossed the sky, lighting up the expanse of darkness with sporadic blazes of white-blue shocks. They seemed to just drop out of the sky, out of seemingly nowhere against the black, and rocketed with tiny whispering whistles to the earth, over the mountains and across the horizon. Poison thought they looked like tiny bullets from some celestial ray gun.

“Are those shooting stars?” he breathed. He’d never seen them in real life. He’d heard about them falling to earth in Zones over, but he’d never had the chance to see such a phenomenon himself. He stared wide-eyed at the falling lights. They were so beautiful.

“Better,” Nicotine replied, though she seemed more occupied by the lights than speaking. “Those are lost souls.”

As she spoke it, one of the beams came hurtling towards the rock formation behind them, sailed over their heads with a screaming sound-no longer whistling innocently-and disappeared into the large shadow. Poison and Nicotine watched it as it went, exchanged wide-eyed, awe-struck glances, and disappeared back into the van. Moments later, they were bursting out of the back door, running after the little lost soul.

Only Poison remembered to slam the doors shut again.

 

 

 

Kobra had been staring out the windows of the Trans Am when the first flash of light crossed his vision. He was slumped in the back seats, trying to still his jumping nerves by watching the ever-identical desert scene pass him by, absently fiddling with his transmitter in his hands. Excitement and the churning sickness of disappointment had made Kobra unresponsive for the majority of the trip. Since Ghoul had burst into the kitchen, waking him and claiming someone had seen Poison in another Zone-Zone Two, no less; what was he doing way out there?-he’d been high on relief. Poison wasn’t dead. He was alive and moving around in Zone Two.

But what if it wasn’t him? What if the caller had been wrong? It wasn’t like there wasn’t a dozen other killjoys out there with bright red hair. What if he’d been mistaken? The question hung in the air like a suspended knife. What if Poison was still dead?

He meant _missing_.

That was when the flash of white light soared across the pitch black sky. Kobra’s head perked as he waited with baited silence for the flash to shine again. Ghoul and Jet were talking quietly up front, not quite loudly enough to stir Kobra in case he had been asleep, but Kobra quickly hushed them. “Hey! Did you see that?”

Jet glanced back at him from the rearview mirror. “Oh, you’re up. See what?”

The white light blinked again. Kobra tapped the window. “There! That light! Did you see it?”

Ghoul whistled. “What was that?”

Jet slowed the Trans Am and gazed out the window with Kobra and Ghoul. The hum of the engine blocked out any small noises outside the walls, and the quiet inside was lulling. Suddenly, the pitch black lit up in white-blue flame and it seemed as though the sky had shattered and had begun falling around them.

“Shooting stars,” Ghoul wondered aloud. His eyes reflected the white light from even inside the Trans Am. He breathed out a laugh. “That’s so sick.”

“Yeah,” Kobra said absently in awe of the shooting stars. Ghoul glanced back at him and grinned softly. “Do you want to go outside?”

Kobra nodded eagerly and scooted out after Ghoul, turning in a full circle to take in the full effect of the stars falling around him. It was so beautiful. He and Poison had never seen a sky full of falling stars before. Kobra remembered reading about them in one of his old books, heard of them being spotted in Zones faraway. This was amazing!

Kobra and Ghoul jumped hard as a blinding star screeched overhead and disappeared into the night. Kobra bolted in the direction it went in, leaving Ghoul to chase after him. Kobra knew how dangerous this was, running off into the desert at night alone, but the star was so close, and-he knew this sounded crazy-but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was important. That he had to find this star.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought of Nicotine's weird eyesight as something akin to thermal vision. I've always liked comments, too. :)


	7. Sky Meets the Horizon

They’d landed in another refugee town, miles outside of the now non-existent Paradiso Valley, though this one was much tinier and much sparser. Despite it being a town full of Battery City escapees and recognizable faces from the Valley, it was still a small space filled to the brim with people and the sense of community. People were trying to make their lives a little bit better if they could stand it here, and this meant that kids still played, people still laughed; life still continued its slow, sleepy pace here. There wasn’t much in the line of shops open, but the biggest building set up in the middle of the town, Poison guessed served as a place to trade and find necessities judging from the people wandering in and out, some with boxes and others with items carried in their bare hands.

It was still a nice day despite the blazing sun that beat down on their heads. Poison had shorn his jacket and boots, deeming them too hot to be worn today, and simply kept his eyes shut against the sun since he was without his dark sunglasses. He was lounging between Nicotine’s legs while she was perched on the edge of the van floor in order to reach Poison’s head comfortably while she worked. He wondered if the intensity of the sun was bothering her as well, but she made no complaints as she slowly weaved the thread and beads through a lock of Poison’s hair. She’d been wary of her ability to properly apply a threaded hair wrap-what with her complicated vision-but after Poison had seen a few citizens wandering around with the colorful strings and beads in their hair, Poison had eagerly encouraged Nicotine to do one for him, promising to do one for her as well.

“Hey,” Nicotine said suddenly, nudging Poison’s shoulder with her knee. Poison cracked one eye open and looked at her. “Yeah?”

“Could you sing that song again? That song I like from the radio.”

“That new _Stephanie Starlight and the Wishful Thinking_ song?”

Nicotine smiled and her eyes crinkled. “Yeah. That one.”

She’d taken to wearing the goggles only part of the time now, feeling more comfortable around Poison without them. She still wore them around others and in public, but she’d gone without them so often around Poison that the Starry Eyes had almost become a normal thing. Poison liked seeing her this way, emerging from a shell he wasn’t aware that she had built up in the form of her goggles, and hadn’t told her that that was the reason he hadn’t someone from the refugee town with experience to make the hair wrap. Tiny steps, he told himself. Tiny steps.

Poison sang the song from the radio, not minding the volume of his voice much or the fact that the song had been mostly sung by a woman somewhat out of his vocal range, and let the ever-present tug of Nicotine working the thread and colored beads into his hair lull him into a deep calm.

 

 

 

 

Kobra had fallen asleep in the back seat of the Trans Am, chin tucked against his chest as his head leaned forward and his hands clasped in his lap. His neck was going to be so sore when he woke up. He held a bundle in his hands, something wrapped up in his jacket to keep it safe and cool, something to nurse like a lifeline. He’d found the star. It had been impossibly hot when he’d found it, so hot that they had had to wait near hours for it to cool, though it didn’t spur much inconvenience-Jet said they all needed to stretch their legs and something to help them stay awake. The impact zone was bigger than the rock itself-if you could call it a rock-and spanned nearly three feet wide. The tiny light inside wasn’t even half of that width. Kobra had sat perched on the edge of the crater watching the fallen star as it cooled. It glowed white-blue for hours until it had dropped to a decent enough temperature that he and Ghoul could pry it out of the ground without burning their hands indefinitely and wrap it in Kobra’s jacket. He’d carried it the entire time, holding it close in his lap as the Trans Am took off into the night again.

This thing was special and Kobra knew it. He knew it by the way it glowed and by the way it seemed like translucent crystal rather than any of the blackened pieces of grey rock he’d seen pictured in his books. The star was deep, silky sleek black with eyes of white, clear crystal like spider eyes that dotted across its surface in countless numbers. Even now, hours into the morning, the star still hummed with warmth through Kobra’s jacket as it lay in his lap. Initially, he’d hoped to see how much it was worth in the stores in Zone One, knowing full well that they could use the carbons that came with it, but part of him wanted to keep it with him to have something priceless and unique. But as he’d drifted off into sleep that night, he knew that it was meant for something more than a fortune of carbons or something that would collect dust as it was pretty to look at.

He just wasn’t quite sure for what.

 

 

“Hey,” came Ghoul’s voice cutting through Kobra’s sleep. He nudged his shoulder, craning his body in the front seat to look back at Kobra. When Kobra’s groggy eyes focused on Ghoul’s, he frowned at the flatness that dulled them over. The usual sparkling olive greens had become lackluster with discomfort and disappointment. Something was wrong. Kobra straightened in his seat, wrapping his hands tighter around his jacket and the still-warm star. “Where are we?”

Ghoul ran his hand through his hair, leaning his elbow against the adjacent seat as he did so. “We’re in Paradiso Valley,” he said slowly. “We just made it, so don’t worry; you haven’t missed anything. Though,” he glanced back outside through the windshield, “I don’t think you would’ve missed much.” Kobra’s brow furrowed in concern. “What’s that mean?”

Ghoul moved and allowed Kobra to slide out of the Trans Am after him. Kobra blinked rapidly in the glaring light, raising his hand to cover his eyes as he took in the mess before him. Confusion and horror churned inside him. He felt like he would be sick at any minute and the hot sun searing over him was no reprieve. “I thought you said we’d reached Paradiso.”

What was left of the town was an eyesore. None of the buildings were still standing, their charred remains pointing like black daggers up to heaven. It still reeked of smoke and death, though Kobra wasn’t sure how fresh or old it was. The fact remained the same: no one was there. Kobra could only hope that they had all escaped the blaze before they were trapped in their houses, but then, if they had, he wouldn’t be smelling that startlingly all-too familiar scent of burned bodies and bodily fluids amidst the wood smoke. Kobra wandered through the remains of the town, not entirely sure what he himself was searching for. A shock of red hair amidst the debris? A blue Dead Pegasus jacket flapping in the breeze?

Something crunched under his foot and Kobra staggered back. In his paranoia, he’d imagined delicate finger bones being smashed under his heels by accident and was nearly sick right then and there, but the device that lay in place of white bones was enough to send his head spinning and make his throat run dry. Kneeling, Kobra scooped up the transmitter in shaking hands, dusting the soot and dirt away from its surface with his thumb. _‘It_ _couldn’t be Poison’s’,_ he told himself hurriedly to stave off the panic. ‘ _Poison’s has a star on the back.’_ He turned the transmitter in his hands and swiped the grime away in the leftmost edge. It was a bit chipped, but the little red star was still there, glowing through the thin coat of dust like an omen.

Everything came shattering down in an instant.

Kobra wasn’t quite sure where Jet Star had come from, but before he knew it, the transmitter was being pulled from his hands and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t cry out the pain and tears blocked in his chest, _no air no air no fucking air where did it all go?_

Ghoul was there to catch him when he finally fainted.

 

 

 

 

“How does it look?”

Poison snapped awake, sitting up quickly. “Huh?” He twisted and gazed up at Nicotine with dazed eyes. “What?”

He guessed Nicotine was rolling her eyes; he couldn’t quite tell. “I said, how does it look? Don’t tell me you dozed off?”

Poison shrugged and removed himself from the dusty ground, brushing off his jeans as he did so. “Almost. I haven’t slept in a while.” Nicotine nodded, absently bothering with the vile around her neck. “I guess you haven’t. Come on; do me next.”

“Okay.” Poison regarded himself in the little shard of mirror lying on one of the shelves, turning his head this way and that as he inspected the thread wrap. He remembered he’d have to thank the woman who’d given them the thread later; he really liked these colors. The thread he’d picked for himself was blue and purple and gold, woven with yellow and orange beads. Nicotine, being unable to see the colors well, hadn’t chosen any specific threads and beads. ‘ _I don’t care. It’ll probably look pretty sick in my hair anyway.’_ So Poison had chosen for her. He picked up the little plastic baggie of beads and thread and returned to Nicotine. “Which side of your head do you want me to tie it on?” he asked.

“Any side. I don’t mind.”

Poison sat cross-legged on Nicotine’s right side and combed his fingers through one small section of her hair, the way she had done with his red hair. He tied off the section with a tiny piece of black thread and began wrapping the dark blue thread around and around, slowly so as not to overlap or leave open spaces. It was silent, repetitive work, oddly soothing, but still leaving room for questions that needed answering. After all this time, Poison was still having to pick Nicotine’s brain for information about the new world around him; what had it been? Nearly three weeks now?

“Hey, Nic.”

“Yeah, Poison?”

“What’s so special about me?”

Nicotine grinned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Poison continued, raking his fingers through Nicotine’s hair once more to straighten it before he continued working, “why didn’t the Phoenix Witch accept me? When this first started, you told me that she wouldn’t accept my soul yet. That’s why I had to stay with you. With it, I mean. It’s like limbo, kind of: I’m not dead, but I’m not me either. What’s so special about me that she would leave me halfway in between?”

Nicotine shrugged. “She sees something in you,” she said simply. “She’s not through with you yet. All those stories you’ve told me about you and your friends saving people and fighting BL/ind still have to keep going. You have to keep saving people, making a difference in people’s lives, right? I think She understands that. You know, like soul keeping is mine, being a protector of the people is yours. You just happen to have given up your soul to save someone else.” She shrugged again and then made a surprised noise. “Oh! I forgot. The falling stars…weren’t they beautiful?”

“Yeah,” Poison replied. The image of white lights falling through the night sky was scorched into the backs of his eyelids; he wouldn’t forget it anytime soon. “What did the one we found look like?”

Nicotine rubbed at her right eye as though it bothered her. “She was gorgeous. So small. Named Eve, I think. Electric blue. She would’ve looked pretty next to you.”

Poison grinned at the comparison. The artist in him was actually a bit jealous of the way Nicotine saw the colors in people and living things. The rest was in awe. “You ever wonder what yours looks like?” he asked. Nicotine nodded hesitantly. “Sometimes. Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder, but I’m not sure.”

“I say you’re purple,” Poison told her. Nicotine laughed with delight. “ _Purple_?”

“The most vibrant purple there is. ‘ _Purple people eater’_ purple.”

Nicotine giggled something about the adventures of an atomic redhead and a purple people eater that dissolved into another fit of laughing. Poison lost himself in it too, a dull throb in his chest reminding him of grey eyes and curly hair, and the more familiar hazels of Kobra Kid’s, lighting up in a similar way at some stupid inside joke between siblings that the two had shared.

When the two of them had quietened down, Nicotine asked quietly, “Are you homesick?”

Poison shrugged, continuing his work. “A little. Just now I thought of Kobra. I liked to make him laugh when he was little too.” His fingers tripped over one another momentarily, though he quickly righted himself. “I miss him. You would’ve liked him. He’s a little quiet and he might come off as standoffish, but he’s just shy. If you get to know him, the kid’s a real sweetheart and the biggest nerd for dinosaurs and magazines you’ve ever met. If you can get him talking about sci-fi, he’ll keep talking for hours.”

“Just like you,” Nicotine said fondly. Poison didn’t deny her. “What about Jet Star? Does he like sci-fi too? I mean, considering his name and all,” Nicotine said. Poison laughed and shook his head. “No, not really. He’s pretty down with botany and stuff with the earth, y’know? We probably would’ve starved a long time ago without his plant smarts; either that or eaten something poisonous and killed our dumbasses.”

“Language,” Nicotine reminded him with a giggle. Poison shrugged with a smile.

“Sorry.”

 

 

 

 

Kobra woke sitting straight up, sending dizzy waves of nausea churning through his head and whiplash when a hand pressed against his chest to push him back. “Whoa,” Ghoul was saying, trying to calm him down. “Hey, chill out. It’s fine. You’re okay, you’re okay.”

Kobra’s head was on a swivel. He was looking for too many things at once: the transmitter, the star in his jacket, his brother. “Where…”

“We’re still in the Trans Am. Or I guess, back in it. You blacked out in Paradiso, kiddo. Had us scared to death.” Ghoul shook his head. “Shock, Jet says. We never found anything anyway, nothing that gave away whatever happened to that town or where everyone went. So we just high-tailed it out of there.” Ghoul had rested Kobra’s head in his lap in the backseat while Jet drove them through the destroyed town, saying that there was a town a few miles away that they could spend the night in before they headed back to the diner in the morning. They hadn’t found Poison or anything left of him save for the transmitter, but both Jet Star and Fun Ghoul had opted to keep that part quiet for Kobra’s sake. After he’d seen the transmitter, he’d made the most heartbroken sound either of the two remaining killjoys had ever heard, clasping the device in his hands with such a vice grip that they shook. Jet had been the one to pry it from his fingers, trying to calm him down, but it was as if someone had pulled the plug in Kobra’s mind, and had literally shut him down. Neither had ever seen him like that before.

“Right now, we’re hanging around a little ref town a few hours from Paradiso. Jet’s looking for a place to stay. We’ll spend the night here, I guess. Though I guess you’ve already done a lot of sleeping already, huh?” Ghoul said, trying to make light of the current situation. Kobra rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes and sighed heavily.

“Are you hungry?” Ghoul asked. Kobra shook his head. “No. Can I get up?”

Ghoul helped him sit up and slip out of the Trans Am. Kobra leaned against the door, running his hands through his hair. He needed some air, couldn’t help the claustrophobic feeling that had been suffocating him these past few agonizing week. To come so close, to be so close to finding Poison, and to have it all torn away with a desert town fire had crushed his spirits. His chest felt congested, like his lungs might shrivel, and his throat felt dry and burning.

“Hey,” Ghoul leaned on the top of the car with folded arms, looking on at Kobra with concern. Kobra kept his back to him and sniffed quietly. “I’m going for a walk, okay?” he said. He could feel Ghoul watching him, burning holes into the back of his head as he pushed away from the Trans Am and began walking down the street. He didn’t wonder if he should tell Ghoul not to wait on him; he would find his own way back. He didn’t want to talk anymore. He was tired of pretending. He would walk until he was numb and then walk some more until he could feel no more.

Kobra passed so many different places and faces that they all seemed to blend together, so much so that he wondered if he was just wandering around in circles. He didn’t realize how small the town was until he’d reached the last building and finally snapped out of his grief-stricken trance to realize that he’d found himself staring at sand and dry grass on all sides. He still wasn’t sure how long he’d been walking, he even turned back to see if he could spot the Trans Am a few feet behind him. It was gone, swallowed up by the sparse buildings and the thick population of townspeople roaming the streets. It was just him. And that was okay. Kobra was content to just stare out across the horizon and be alone with his thoughts, buzzing around in his head and keeping up a ruckus. Sometimes he heard Poison’s voice. Most of the time, his brother’s voice was replaying like a record tape in his brain, each joke and story, the melody of the songs he sang around the diner. Other times it was Kobra’s own voice, reprimanding himself for letting him get away so easily that afternoon in the diner, telling him how stupid, _so stupid_ , he had been. And one very small voice in the very deepest recesses of his mind was livid at Poison for leaving that night without at least leaving a message with Ghoul for him, something that would take the edge off of his disappearance, anything at all would’ve been fine. An _‘I_ _love you’_ , a hint to his whereabouts, an explanation as to _why he disappeared in the first place_?

The horizon shimmered with the desert heat, the sun casting a glow across the sand and pressing hell against Kobra’s uncovered eyes. Everything seemed distorted across the desert and beyond, like an illusion that had begun to break apart despite the sun beginning its descent through the sky. For an instant, Kobra thought it was beautiful; he’d always liked the sunsets that appeared in the desert. His face felt wet; he swiped his wrist across his cheek, nibbling on his lip. He kept his issues bottled up, each negative thought and emotion suppressed deep into his subconscious; crying wasn’t allowed. He’d been on the receiving end of Poison’s worrying for most of his life, it came with being his younger brother and he understood that. So he’d tried his best not to add onto his-or any of the other’s-loads by giving them a reason to suspect something was wrong with him.

Now alone on the outskirts of a tiny town lost in the desert, tears came seeping freely no matter how hard Kobra chewed his lip to shreds or how many times he brushed his wrist across his eyes. It was getting harder to see. Something was moving way out there on the horizon. ‘ _It’s all in your head_ ,’ Kobra told himself. He tried very hard to believe that. He wasn’t being stubborn; he just didn’t want to be disappointed anymore.

But the movement persisted. In fact it seemed to be approaching from all the way across the horizon, shimmering slightly around the edges of the figures as they came closer in from the heat. They appeared as dark shapes trudging across the sand, standing close together and carrying something in each hand. They were awfully loud, calling something that grew louder and louder as they walked, that eventually became clear enough for Kobra to distinguish as singing (?)-more or less. They were shouting the lyrics, more like it, an upbeat chorus that didn’t appear to be lyrics at all. A sound, an onomatopoeia? What exactly was ‘ _na na na’_ supposed to be?

Kobra brushed the feeling of familiarity off as best he could, trying his damn near hardest not to believe that it was his brother’s voice resounding across the desert, singing now about plastic surgery and the ever-popular Batman, but the deepened shade of crimson that became more and more vibrant in the fleeting sunlight was undeniable. Kobra’s brow furrowed as he strained to see, his breath coming in short gasps as the nervous mix of excitement and fear churned through his stomach. He walked, taking a few steps at a time, his legs trembling under him, before breaking out in a full sprint. His heart and legs pumped with adrenaline and amidst his panting breaths, he screamed with every minute of pent-up hurt and anger at himself, at the world, at anything that he could even find the energy to be pissed at.

“Poison!”

The singing stopped abruptly, but Kobra couldn’t hear it; his blood was pumping too loudly in his ears. The figures froze. It was indeed a shock of red hair, one of purple by its side and they were carrying cactus pads. Cactus pads? Why cactus pads? Kobra didn’t care what they were carrying, probably didn’t even process the items in his head. Regardless, the cactus pads went tumbling to the ground, forgotten, around the figure’s feet. They moved slowly, wary footfalls as if they weren’t quite sure what to do with themselves just yet, but Kobra already knew who the figure was.

“Poison! Poison!”

He could see his brother’s face clearly now, contorted with confusion and mounting realization, becoming undone with relief and excitement and a myriad of other emotions that had become muddled into an expression best boiled down to joy.

Kobra nearly knocked Poison flat against the ground, colliding into him with such force. The crushing embrace brought both brothers to their knees, neither one really standing on stable legs and unwilling to let the other go. Kobra gripped his brother’s shirt with clawed fingers, holding on so tightly he might’ve been piercing skin, his arms wrapped around him like an iron vice. Poison, who was equally as clingy as his younger brother, didn’t seem to mind the immediate wetness of his shirt as Kobra sobbed brokenly into it, murmuring with a shaky voice into his blonde hair.

“It’s okay, it’s okay-you must’ve been so scared…”

 

 

Poison and Nicotine had gone on a walk beyond the town’s limits to look for cactus pads that Nicotine would shave and mince to make tea with. Poison still wasn’t partial to the taste of cactus tea, but Nicotine seemed to like it rather well, and he liked to humor her. Along the way, he’d found a small desert turtle hiding amongst a clump of dry grass and had shown it to her. Nicotine had taken to the little reptile immediately, which had prompted a rant about dinosaurs from Poison as they walked, old bandanas and carving knife in hand-tools necessary for harvesting prickly cactus pads safely, or as safely as scarce supplies in the desert could manage.

This was how they’d missed the Trans Am coming into the town around sunset, and therefore nearly missed Kobra standing around on the outskirts alone. Neither Poison nor Nicotine had noticed him-a duet had ensued prior to having learned a new song from the radio that evening and with the help of Poison’s uncanny ability to pick up lyrics like _that_. Though the scream that echoed off the furthest corners of the desert had been enough to catch their attention and make Poison’s blood go cold.

Cold in a good way.

Nicotine had watched the brother’s reunite with a smile playing on her lips, looking down at them from under her paper parasol-she had _such_ sensitive skin and had mostly been hiding in the safe shade of the Wish Bucket or conducting business under the cover of night, in case you hadn’t noticed-and tilted her head to one side in thought.

How curious-they were both a sparkling white-blue.

 

 

A similar bulrush occurred in the small room that Jet had managed to secure for the night in a small makeshift motel. Before Poison had properly set foot into the room and closed the door behind him, he found himself unceremoniously pressed into the wall with arms all around him. Amidst the cobra-like-heh, a pun-grip of Jet and Ghoul, Poison managed to wriggle his arms free and tap the closest shoulder. “Hey,” he choked, “ease up. I can’t breathe.”

“Just shut up and let it happen, man,” Ghoul snapped, though his voice cracked slightly. “Do you have any idea how worried we all were?”

Nicotine sat patiently on the edge of the tiny table in the corner, not wanting to intrude on such a precious and private moment-they'd deserved it after all that had happened, Phoenix Witch bless them- and watched as she opened her parasol halfway and closed it again- _snap snap snap_ -not realizing how much time had passed during the reunion until someone nudged her shoulder. Poison grinned down at her, and behind him, through the threadbare drapes over the windows, she could see darkness peeking its way through the flaps. Nighttime already.

“Hi,” Jet Star said, waving in her direction. He had fuzzy hair that reminded her of a sheep and a kind, calm face. “Who’s the kid?” said the other, who must’ve been Fun Ghoul. He had dark hair and seemed to glow with an outspoken brashness that was admirable and a little loud in a matter of speaking. Loveable. Kobra, sitting close by Poison on the windowsill, shrugged. “To be honest, I didn’t even notice her until now.”

It was Nicotine’s turn to shrug. “That’s fine. Reunions can be exciting.”

Poison made a face at them. “You guys are rude. This is Nicotine. I’ve been roaming around with her for the past…”

“Three. Weeks,” Ghoul finished for him with an annoyed look across his features. Poison’s eyes widened momentarily before he nodded slowly, taking it in. “Three weeks then. She’s the one who helped Kobra get better.”

All eyes turned to her. She smiled politely back, meeting their questioning and understandably skeptical gazes with an acknowledging grin. As Poison dived into the story for her, she felt her smile eventually fade as he mentioned the way he’d traded his soul for Kobra’s health, never mind the shocked looks that crossed the other faces. It was touching, the way they’d all found themselves together again, alive and well, but Poison was still in a contract of sorts with the Witch. As heartwarming as it was, he still couldn’t leave her side, not without losing Kobra once more. He was bound to her, and therefore, it seemed bound to grief either way.

“Are you insane?”

Kobra had shoved Poison’s shoulder, nudging him into Nicotine’s point of view and startling her out of her thoughts. Now, he was crushing him with a fierce hug, looking annoyed and relieved and pissed off all at once, as he told him, “I don’t care what happens; don’t ever, ever, _ever_ do something stupid and reckless like that again!”

“I was-“ Poison began, but Kobra interrupted. “Just trying to help, I know, I know. Don’t ever do that again. I can’t do this again. Not a second time.”

Nicotine felt the force of Kobra’s words as though they were intended for her as much as they were for Poison. Her fingers found the vial around her neck again, full of desert fires, and she decided-three weeks too late and heart already softened and broken by unintentionally breaking this family of brothers apart-that she, too, would never do something like this again. She couldn’t bear it.

 

Unfortunately, that didn’t change a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more to go. Lots of other things planned after this! Also, to the reader who commented about the photograph of the owl, you're right! I always thought Nic's eyes looked that way as well. :)


	8. Here I Have Found Peace

“So you’re coming back with us, right?”

Poison looked up into the hopeful face of Kobra Kid, then gazed past him at Fun Ghoul and Jet Star. They looked equally hopeful, tired and somewhat relived. Before he could answer, movement caught his eye, a flash of purple, and a promise to keep echoed in his mind. _A life_ _for_ _a_ _life_.

He pursed his lips tightly and sat up properly, forcing himself to look Kobra in the eye. He breathed in deep, his heartbeat racing hard and fast in his ears and hands shaking. “I can’t,” he began. His eyes flickered over to Nicotine, who looked as uncomfortable as Poison felt, and added, “I’m bound by her.”

Kobra’s face dropped and his shoulders rose and fell with deep, rapid breaths. “What do you mean? Are you saying…are you telling me that you can’t come back home?”

“What I gave up to save you,” Poison pointed in Nicotine’s general direction, where she was fidgeting with her necklace, “is in there. And I have to stay with it as part of the deal, or everything will go back to the way it was. And I can’t do that again _. I can’t_.” Poison shook his head. “I have to stay with Nic,” he continued gently, “and you guys have to go home. You’re needed there.”

“Yeah, well we need _you_ ,” Kobra countered desperately. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. After three weeks of silence and being so worried and lonely that he’d almost made himself physically sick again, he’d finally found Poison and found out that he couldn’t even come home. It was unfair!...and partly his fault. He’d been the one to get so sick he’d nearly died, too stubborn to let the others know that something was wrong with him until it was too late to do anything about it. If he hadn’t been so…so _much like himself_ , then maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess! He ran his hand through his blonde hair, pulling on it tight as frustrated, angry tears threatened to fall again. “ _I_ need you! Damn it, Poison, you can’t do this!”

Poison sighed quietly, looking on at his little brother. He was probably too caught up in grief to see that Poison didn’t want to do this either. He didn’t want to leave his brother so soon after finding him safe and sound, but it was easier than watching him die from pneumonia, and he hadn’t even been there to see that! Still, Kobra wasn’t going to give up without a fight. He was emotional, stubborn in an almost unmovable way, and wouldn’t be going anywhere unless you physically picked him up and tried to move him, which would undoubtedly result in a fistfight.

Poison stood suddenly, shrugging his shoulder still sore from the burn. “C’mon, kiddo,” he said, gesturing to Kobra. “Let’s walk.”

“I don’t want to walk.”                                                                                                                                        

Poison resisted the urge to roll his eyes. So stubborn was his brother, it almost made him proud. “Please, Kobra,” he pressed gently. “For me. Just the both of us.” Behind Kobra, Ghoul raised an eyebrow quizzically, which Poison returned with a slight nod of his head. He was aware that he was singling his brother out, seeming to have forgotten about the two who he also held dearly, but both killjoys knew that Kobra was the one that needed the most coaxing, talking to. ‘ _Do this for me.’_

Kobra wasn’t as easily swayed.

“Poison, I’m not walking. I don’t want to walk, I want you to-“

“And I will, Kobra,” Poison interjected sharply. He took a breath and tried again. “Just, please walk with me.”

 

 

 

Kobra boots kicked up tiny clouds of dust around his feet, scuffing them with dirt and thinly coating them with the tan residue. Poison was barefoot-oddly enough-wandering beside him with the hem of his pant legs rolled up his calves and his blue jacket disregarded, still lying in the Wish Bucket across town. For a long while, they walked in silence, keeping step with each other’s footfalls the entire way, neither slowing nor speeding up to outdo the other.

Just walking.

“I like your hair thingy,” Kobra said suddenly. Poison turned his head to him, inadvertently tossing the threaded hair wrap gently about his head, and grinned. “Yeah? Thanks. Nicotine made it for me. You should ask her to do one for you,” he added with a laugh. Kobra made a face. “Nah, my hair’s not long enough, I don’t think.” He shrugged. “What’s her deal?”

“Huh?”

“That Nicotine girl. Is she, like, a spiritual voodoo priestess or something? I mean, I can get behind the Phoenix Witch, but the whole ‘soul-in-a-bottle’ thing is a little out there,” Kobra said. Poison smiled softly. “Yeah, for a while that’s what I thought too. But she’s not anything to be scared of-at least, not like monsters under the bed of some shit like that. She isn’t evil or anything, and I wasn’t tricked into trading my soul. She’s just trying to help people.” To his dismay, Kobra snorted ruefully and said with a bitterness staining his voice, “Yeah. _Sure_. If that’s what you want to call it.”

“She means well, kid,” Poison told him. “If I hadn’t met her, I wouldn’t have been able to save you. We wouldn’t be having this talk right now.” Kobra frowned in silence and then dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Ugh, this is too much,” he groaned into his gloves. “I don’t know if I can keep this up.” Poison turned very serious then, stopping dead in the middle of the road and turning fully to face Kobra. “You have to, Kobra. Listen to me; you’re strong. You’ve been strong enough to survive this desert and not go crazy or get yourself killed. You’ve been strong enough to face down Dracs and outlaws and even Korse himself on that one occasion,” he said, grabbing Kobra’s shoulders. “You’ve been strong enough to handle everything this godforsaken desert has managed to throw at you, and you haven’t given up yet! You’re still my scary smart little brother, who still geeks out over science fiction novels and dinosaurs, who’s still got a sense of humor in this dry-as-a-fucking-bone wasteland and lights up everyone else’s day when you crack a smile. You’re still you, and I did what I did in order to save that. Don’t make me wrong. You can do this.”

Poison smiled, though he realized with a pang of disappointment that he sounded a lot like he himself was giving up. An idea suddenly flashed into his mind-why hadn’t he remembered this earlier?

“Even if I’m not there in the diner with you,” he added, “I’m still only a transmitter call away.”

Kobra started, then rolled his eyes. “Oh, right. I forgot.” Poison’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Forgot what?” He allowed himself to be guided back through town the way they’d come and found himself standing before the Trans Am parked a ways away from where the Wish Bucket had consequently been left behind. He ran his hand across the hood, disturbing a thin veil of dust that had settled across it, and grinned. “I missed this old thing.”

Kobra dug around in the backseat, mumbling something to himself as he went. “Damn, where’d it go? Don’t tell me…Oh, wait. Ah!”

He resurfaced a moment later with a little device in his hand, holding it up for Poison to see. Poison’s eyes grew wide and his hands flew to his belt. “Where’d you get that?”

“We found it in that town that burned down. It freaked me out pretty bad when I stepped on it,” Kobra said, remembering that moment with a grimace. “I thought you were somewhere under that rubble.”

Poison took back the transmitter fitting it on his belt back where it belonged. “Thanks, kiddo. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d lost it.” He glanced up and barely caught a glimpse of red peeking out from the Trans Am’s backseat. He pointed at it. Something was ever-so faintly glowing inside. “What’s that?” Kobra glanced back in the direction Poison was pointing in. “Oh, yeah. Check this out.”

Again, he disappeared into the backseats for a moment before reappearing again with his balled-up jacket cradled in his arms.

“There was a meteor shower out here a couple of nights ago. I found one of the ones that fell,” Kobra said with a bright smile as he began unwrapping the bundle. “It was gorgeous, man; you should’ve seen it.”

“I did, actually. Saw it when it first started. Nicotine and I found one too. She said they’re actually lost souls; the one we found was named Eve or something.”

Kobra pulled back a sleeve and held up the star for Poison to see. It was still glowing the eerie, ethereal white-blue glow that had cut through the night sky, even now in the fading afternoon light. Poison rubbed at the star with his thumb, like he’d found a smudge of dirt across it. “They’re beautiful, huh? Wonder what this one’s name is?”

Kobra gave him an odd look that quickly dissolved into one of knowing. “Oh. Right. Lost souls.” He frowned at the star. “I was actually going to see how many carbons I could get for it, you know? Like call it a diamond or something, but now that I know it’s got a name and all, I feel pretty bad about wanting to pawn it off…”

His eyes widened slowly as his speech trailed off. It was so sudden that Poison looked up at him curiously from admiring the star. “Hey. What is it?”

“Nicotine…she said these were souls?”

“Lost ones, yeah.”

“Souls, nonetheless, right?”                   

 

 

Kobra had nearly left Poison in the dust in his mad dash back to the tiny motel. He held his bundled-up jacket close to his chest as he ran, nursing it like a lifeline, his last hope, a precious thing that would reverse time as he knew it. He couldn’t believe that this was happening; he’d listened with the slightest hint of doubt when Poison had been explaining what had happened to him in the time that he was missing, even down to the details of how his body was reacting to being an ‘empty vessel’. That had scared him the most, knowing that Poison wasn’t quite himself, and he was determined to set things right, even if it meant ditching a few carbons for some rock from space.

Poison finally caught up to him, bursting through the front door of the room as Kobra set foot inside first. Though the situation was urgent at best, there was still a moment lost on taking in the scene inside the room. Jet Star was seated on the wooden table, leaning with his elbows on his knees to get to Nicotine’s height, who was weaving her fingers through his hair, puffing it up and flouncing it around. She had the widest grin on her face, looking for all the world like a little kid, and directed an even brighter smile on her face at the two brothers as they returned.

“Poison! Jet’s hair is so fluffy!” she said, as though she’d discovered something priceless. Poison grinned at her, noticing the identical smile on Jet’s face. He knew Jet loved kids, was great with them-though he wasn’t sure how credible it was to assume that Nicotine was that young-and had figured he and Nicotine would hit it off pretty well from the get-go. He wondered though, from past experience, if she had been touching all over the other killjoys’ faces, trying to get a better look at them, and knew that he would have to explain to her what Kobra looked like if she ever wanted to know; Kobra didn’t like physical contact very much. Ghoul didn’t seem to mind though, tilting his head this way and that as Nicotine mapped out his features with her hands. “Ghoul’s got a cool scar,” she said over her shoulder, unaware that she was just feeding the man’s ego. Ghoul’s smile widened and he winked at Poison and Kobra, who rolled their eyes. “You guys feeling better?”

“Yeah,” Poison said and glanced at Kobra. “Uh, Nic, we’ve got something for you to check out. Kobra found it a few nights ago.” Kobra unwrapped his jacket and tentatively held it out for Nicotine. She was standing before him in the blink of an eye, rustling the fabric of the jacket for a better look of the star inside. Her jaw had dropped and she seemed to have forgotten about the rest of the room around her. “You actually found one?” she gasped, fingers flexing and waving over the star as though she were scared to touch it. Kobra nodded. “It fell outside of our car while we were on the road about a night ago. I was going to try and sell it-“

A look of horror crossed Nicotine’s face, and Kobra scrambled to finish.

“But, I had this weird feeling that it was important somehow. Poison told me these were actually people’s souls.”

Nicotine nodded fiercely. “Lost souls, yes. Very important you found this.”

Kobra held it close and pursed his lips, gazing down at it. “I know. I want to trade it for Poison’s soul back.”

Poison’s eyes widened. Behind Nicotine, Jet and Ghoul tensed and straightened at the prospect. Kobra watched Nicotine expectantly for an answer, a sign that she understood what he was saying. Anything that might ease the nervousness churning in his stomach. She looked at the star still wrapped in his jacket, then slowly gazed up at him. A smile bloomed on her face.

 

She told Poison to close the door, no one should be looking in on them, then she took her necklace in her hands. “You remember how this works,” she said to him. Poison nodded and moved to sit on the floor in front of her. She gestured for Kobra to give her the star and placed it in her lap. She reached up for her goggles, intending to take them off, but her hands hesitated, stopping just short of pulling them down over her head. She pursed her lips in nervousness, reminded that it wasn’t just her and Poison anymore. There were others in the room too, worrying her with what they might think. Poison picked up on her shyness and touched her shoulder. “Hey,” he murmured, “its fine. They’re good guys; they won’t freak out on you. I promise.”

Nicotine nodded. She pulled the goggles down over her face, hanging them around her neck and blinked, scratching nervously at her arm when the others made hushed noises at the sight of her eyes. She immediately threw her gaze at the star, cheeks burning, and missed Poison silencing his friends with a sharp look. “Okay,” she breathed, placing her hands on either side of the stone, “here we go.”

Once her hands made contact with the star, its white-blue glow dimmed quickly, like a light bulb flickering out into darkness, and her arm began to take on the otherworldly glow in the form of a small blip of light like a firefly moving up her arm, across her shoulder, and over her cheek like a glowing teardrop. The only remnants of the light, or any proof that the whole spectacle had even been real and unimagined was the flash in Nicotine’s eyes, like a fire burning bright amidst the stars.

For a moment, she was silent, staring ahead indefinitely and unmoving. Then she blinked a second time and began talking a mile a minute to Poison, excitedly gesturing with her hands. “You should have seen them, Poison,” she said happily. “The color of a sunset, like vibrant orange and red-you would’ve loved it!”

“What was the name?” Poison was equally ecstatic, chattering with her like no one else was around. Nicotine rubbed at her eyes. “They called him Hollow Point, I think. He looks a lot like you.”

Behind them, Ghoul and Kobra were exchanging glances, shrugging their shoulders in shared confusion as Poison and Nicotine babbled on. Jet simply watched in silence, still in awe of what had just happened. Kobra was the one to break the two out of their conversation, piping up and turning two pairs of eyes to him. “Is it over?”

Nicotine shook her head. “Not yet. Poison is still here,” she explained, uncapping the vial on her necklace. She tilted it to one side and out dropped a single, lonely desert fire into her palm. She watched it momentarily, as if reminiscing, and murmured, “Still atomic red.” She glanced up at Poison and smiled softly. “I’m gonna miss you.”

Poison pulled her close in a tight hug. “I’ll miss you, too, kiddo. You’ll come back to Zone One sometimes, though, right? You know where we are; you’re always welcome.” Nicotine nodded against his chest, and replied in a small voice, “I know. I’ll stop by as often as I can.” She hugged him tighter, and Poison remembered holding her like this the night of the raid. Part of him still worried about her. The other part knew that she would be okay without him, knew that he was only worrying about her because she was his friend. The smile she gave him when she pulled away reassured him of that.

“When you wake up, you’ll probably be really hungry and tired. You’ll probably sleep for a long time,” she told him in fair warning. Poison nodded. “Will you be gone when I wake up?”

Nicotine didn’t answer right away, but Poison already knew. He nodded once more with resolve and asked her, “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready.”

The desert fire, red and vibrant, fell into Poison’s hand, shriveling on contact and withering painfully away. Poison felt an apology bubbling under his skin for essentially killing the flower, but as the last hints of the once bright red died away from the petals like ink seeping out, he felt a flood of relief- _Kobra, I’m coming home-_ and then nothing.

 

 

 

 

It was good to be back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. :)


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